Emma Donoghue: 'Wooster’s sweetly foolish flippancy is just the tonic for Covid-19 times'
The book I am currently reading
James Meek’s To Calais, In Ordinary Time is an absolute dazzler of a story about folk highborn and low about to encounter the Black Death: linguistically daring and full of heart.
The book that changed my life
Emily Dickinson’s Collected Poems. My mother used to quote Dickinson, and when I got around to reading her poems they blew my mind. They seemed to give me permission to be odd, to follow my curiosity wherever it led, and also to be queer.
The book I wish I’d written
If I’d created White Teeth instead of Zadie Smith, I could die happy.
The book that had the greatest influence on my writing
Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion opened a door for me by showing me that overtly lesbian themes were compatible with literary ambition. (Well, duh, but it seemed less obvious back in 1987.)
The book I’d most like to be remembered for? Room, I suppose, because it seems to get under people’s skins
The book I think is most underrated
Alan Garner’s Red Shift (with its time-jumping structure and its unnerving atmosphere) obsessed me in my teens, and I don’t understand why everyone hasn’t read it.
The book that changed my mind
Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, and Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th, together ensured that I’ll never look at a prison inmate the same way again.
The last book that made me cry
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. I’m highly resistant to books marketed by hooks to more famous books/authors/historical figures, so I picked this one up in a cynical spirit because of the Shakespeare thing … but its dramatisation of a boy’s death broke my heart.
The last book that made me laugh
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid is a dangerously, gaspingly funny novel; she gets it so right about everything from child psychology to intergenerational awkwardness to the full spectrum of racism.
The book I couldn’t finish
Oh, so many! Since having kids my time feels more precious so I cast lots of books aside at the 50-page mark: like a first date, there’s no accounting for (or arguing with) chemistry. One recent example: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante.
Related: Marlon James on his Booker-winning novel A Brief History of Seven Killings – books podcast
The book I’m most ashamed not to have read
Marlon James’s Man Booker-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings. When I tried, the multiple voices were just too much for me to sort out, but from everything I’ve heard, I should tackle it again.
The book I give as a gift
Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy – especially to adults who may be labouring under the delusion that it’s just for kids.
The book I’d most like to be remembered for
Room, I suppose, because it seems to get under people’s skins.
My earliest reading memory
An illustrated omnibus of children’s literature. I can picture its pages so vividly, and it included excerpts of so many classics I went on to read, it served as the start of many other reading journeys, much like the Wood Between the Worlds in CS Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew.
My comfort read
A recent New Yorker piece on PG Wodehouse reminded me how much I used to love his Jeeves books, so I downloaded three, and I’m finding Bertie Wooster’s sweetly foolish flippancy just the tonic for Covid-19 times.
• The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue is published by Picador (£16.99).
