AS HER THIRD NOVEL, A HOUSE FOR ALICE, IS PUBLISHED THIS MONTH, ORDINARY PEOPLE AUTHOR
My favourite book as a child was…
Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, because it was strange and so matter-of-fact about its fantasy. Whenever I couldn’t get to sleep at night, I would imagine myself falling down a hole in the ground, which was actually quite scary, now I think about it!
The one book I think everyone should read is…
A trilogy. In fact, Chinua Achebe’s The African Trilogy, comprising Things Fall Apart, No Longer At Ease and Arrow Of God. There is so much beauty and wisdom and reckoning in his writing.
The character I most relate to is…
Shirley from Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, a history teacher at a secondary school in Peckham. I related to her exactingness and stern moral sense.
My favourite line from a book is…
I like that bit in Anna Karenina when a flustered Vronsky cries, ‘No, this is becoming unbearable!’ It’s so alive, it’s funny.
The book that got me through a difficult time is…
Isabel Allende’s memoir Paula, about the tragic loss of her daughter. It helped me cope through a painful family bereavement during my 20s, and I still remember its clarity and honesty.
The last book that made me cry was…
James Baldwin’s Going To Meet The Man. It’s a book of short stories and the title story depicts the lynching of a Black man in the American South through the eyes of an eight-year-old boy. I think of it whenever I hear of another Black person being murdered by racism.
My favourite character from a book is…
It’s quite well documented that I’m a fan of Desdemona Stephanides in Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex. She is truly unforgettable.
My all-time favourite book is…
I couldn’t possibly pick just one, but Jackie Kay’s debut novel, Trumpet, was awe-inspiring in the way it wove music into its sentences and exploded the notion of a fixed identity – it’s a very freeing book. Other absolute favourites are Colum Mccann’s Dancer and Arundhati Roy’s The God Of Small Things.