The inspirations behind my Booker-longlisted book

An anecdote of my mother’s that rattled around in my head for many years. Also a wish to reach back to a period that was right at the furthest stretch of what I could in any way claim to remember. And to try to make a certain kind of novel - lots of flow and momentum, and full of narrative pleasures.

The book that made me fall in love with reading

Rosemary Sutcliffe’s Eagle of the Ninth. People of a certain age will remember Sutcliffe’s work for young readers. She was, first and foremost, a very good writer. Quite a lush style (as I remember it). And a wonderfully vivid historical imagination. As much as anything I can think of, she turned me on to fiction set in the deep past. Us, but not us. Does anyone read her now? I don’t know. Some of it might seem a little quaint. But I loved it.

The book that made me want to become a writer

Lawrence’s The Rainbow. I think I’m prepared to physically fight anyone who wishes to be dismissive about DHL. He wrote as well as Hardy about the natural world. He wrote beautifully about children. He’s an intensely romantic writer (the courting of the Polish woman in The Rainbow shaped my ideas about loving as powerfully as anything else I can easily think of). He was serious about writing and he was serious about life. He cared deeply about the need – for individuals and for societies – to stay connected to what was most alive in them and most intuitive – and issued many warnings about  what would happen if we failed in this.

The book I read again and again 

Anything by Penelope Fitzgerald. So shrewd, so tough-minded, and often very funny. She is on the side of oddballs and the down-trodden. Her novels – all short – are never obvious, but you come away feeling you’ve been told something important about life. Undoubtedly one of the half-dozen best British writers of the second half of the 20th century. She won the Booker once and probably should have done so again.

The book that changed the way I think about the world

Maria Stepanova’s In Memory of Memory is perhaps the most recent example of something that affected me in the manner suggested. It made me want to pay more attention; to look at everything with more intelligence and care. To properly value what is fragile and almost silent.

The book that changed the way I think about the novel

James Salter’s Light Years. The book has such a lovely loose feel to it. Did an afternoon just pass, or was it a year? None of that slightly grim screenplay-style structuring. It throws down scenes, gets lost in (wonderful) conversations, believes anything can belong if it’s written well enough. He reminds us of the form’s extraordinary freedoms. 

The book I’m reading right now

Zama by Antonio di Benedetto. It’s a novel by an Argentine writer published in the late 50’s (I think). Zama is an official in the bureaucracy of one of 18th Century Spain’s South American colonies. He is prickly, endlessly scheming to seduce someone’s wife or for ways to get posted back to Spain. He is bored, deluded and frightened - mostly frightened of himself. The novel is a curious mix of Marquez and Kafka. A hymn to futility. 

The Booker-nominated book everyone should read

Alan Warner’s The Stars in the Bright Sky. Warner is a fabulous writer. He takes big risks. He’s funny, edgy, endlessly inventive. There’s something so unlikely about this novel but somehow he makes it work. And what an ending it has!   

Where and when I most like to write, and the tools I need

I’ll write anywhere, with anything, on anything.