Best books… Emma Healey
Emma Healey, author of Elizabeth is Missing, picks her favourite books. She will be talking about her new novel, Whistle in the Dark, at the Curious Arts Festival, 20-22 July, Pylewell Park, Hampshire (curiousartsfestival.com)
The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner, 1948 (Virago £8.99). A book about a community of East Anglian nuns in the 14th century with no main character and no obvious structure shouldn’t work. But the author uses it to explore every kind of human frailty, and creates a fascinating, touching and uplifting novel.
A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov, 1840 (Penguin £8.99). The titular hero is an utterly unheroic man (of course). There are seductions, smugglers, a kidnapping and a duel, but Pechorin is still bored and self-indulgently melancholic. Throughout the novel, the sublime is tempered
with fatalism and frustration. Irritatingly irresistible.
The Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer, 1962 (Penguin £8.99). Quirky is an overused word, but it does sum up this brilliant book. It begins with an unusual metaphor in a therapist’s office and continues with strange images and surprising confessions. Undetailed and unchronological, but humorous and heart-breaking.
Larry’s Party by Carol Shields, 1997 (Fourth Estate £8.99). Fabulous, confident writing, which slides between tenses and switches perspective, but is never inelegant or confusing. No character is left unexplored in this novel about
a man in the later part of the 20th century, and the effect is warm and brilliantly engaging.
The Accidental by Ali Smith, 2006 (Penguin £8.99). An exhilarating read, and still my favourite of her novels. A family is tested by the arrival of a strange young woman, and the reader is tested in a similar way by the book’s clever style and structure.
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill, 2014 (Granta £7.99). Lively and full of factual asides about film stars, philosophers and scientists, this book engages with modern life while feeling like a classic. One of my favourite novels of the last few years.