J.K. Rowling (author of Harry Potter)Favourite book: The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, by Roddy Doyle.(OP note: it's about an abusive relationship)"It is the most remarkable book. Roddy Doyle gets inside the head of his character so utterly, so completely. I don't think I've ever encountered such a believable, fully rounded female character from any other heterosexual male writer in any age. I should emphasize that I would feel the same way about the book if it had been written by a woman; I would still think it was the most remarkable achievement. But when I sit back and think, 'A man wrote this?'—phenomenal. He has created a woman who, you imagine, will go to the bathroom and defecate. He also leaves her with her dignity, even though what she's going through is a horrific thing. And he does it all in such a subtle way. I do think he's a genius. His dialogue is irreproachable. And your heart...you're totally drawn into his books. I'm very passionate about Roddy Doyle, and I've never met him, which is a frustration to me".
Zadie Smith (author of White Teeth)Middlemarch, by George Eliot(Her full list of favourites here)"A work of genius. But more important—and from a purely selfish point of view—a woman wrote it. That might seem ridiculous to male writers, but a man never has to think twice about the gender of genius. He's got too many examples on his side of the fence. Eliot was the first woman I read who could go toe-to-toe with, say, Tolstoy. I was 15. Since then, I've learned how many grand achievements in the novel have been female, but when I was a teenager, that was news to me".
Marlon James (author of A Brief History of Seven Killings)Favourite classic: Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen"Because nobody has ever been slyer with characters than Austen. It still blows my mind that her unsavory and unfortunate characters — Mrs. Bennet, Lady Catherine, Charlotte — are the only ones who truly know what time it is."
Elena Ferrante (author of My Brilliant Friend)Favourite overlooked book: History, by Elsa Morante"It's the story of Ida Mancuso, a widow, a mother, a Jew frightened by the racial laws of 1938, who in 1941 is raped by a German soldier and becomes pregnant. It's a stunning book about the insecurity that erodes the lives of those who, for the sin of being born, as Morante suggests, can be devoured and annihilated at any moment by 'the universal power'. Morante infuses the conventions of the novel with an innovative spirit, with uninhibited modernity. One reads with one's heart in one's throat".
Emily St. John Mandel (author of Station Eleven)Favourite overlooked book: Submergence, by J.M. LedgardIt is a masterpiece, and so it deserves your attention. Ledgard interweaves the stories of Danielle Flinders, a biomathematician preparing to descend in a submersible to the bottom of the Greenland Sea, and James More, a British spy being held captive by jihadists in Somalia. The two met and fell in love some time ago, and now they are reunited—at least in their thoughts. As a writer, I find there are books that serve as guides to the kind of work I'd wish to write. Submergence is a shining model that both sings with tension and radiates immense humanity and tenderness.
Helen Fielding (author of Bridget Jones' Diary)Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert(Her full list of favourites here)I was probably supposed to read this book when I studied literature at university, but I spent a lot of time playing pool and wound up picking it up for the first time last year when I moved to America and put myself on a self-improvement program. It's the portrait of a young wife in provincial France who's dissatisfied with her life and her husband, whom she deems dull and crusty. Eventually, she becomes intoxicated and humiliated by another man. I've always identified with someone who has fallen for the impossibly sexy man and finds it all going horribly wrong.
Sue Monk Kidd (author of The Secret Life of Bees)The Awakening, by Kate Chopin(Her full list of favourites here)"Chopin writes about a woman's, Edna Pontellier's, struggle against the limitations of her culture. I read it when I was 19 and it woke me up to my own journey, breaking through the limitations of growing up as a girl in the '50s, coming of age in the '60s in the South, prefeminist America. I had to find my own truth, my own voice and not one that was the voice imposed upon me. Reading this book, I became aware."
Hilary Mantel (author of Wolf Hall)Book that has had the most impact on her: The Complete Works of Shakespeare, William ShakespeareI’m sorry if it sounds pious, unoriginal and smug, but no book has mattered to me as much as the dirt-cheap Complete Works of Shakespeare I laid my hands on when I was 10. Previously I’d only read one scene from “Julius Caesar” that I found in an ancient schoolbook. It definitely qualified as the best thing I’d ever read, and I almost exploded with joy when I found there was a whole fat book of plays. I was a strange child.
Margaret Atwood (author of The Handmaid's Tale)Favourite fairy tales: The Juniper Tree, Fitcher's Bird, The Robber Bridegroom, The Goose Girl at the Well - all by the brothers Grimm"My four favorites are “The Juniper Tree” (mysterious, charged with energy, transmigration of souls, the enchanting power of musical art — all this and cannibalism, too); “Fitcher’s Bird” (a Bluebeard’s Castle variant; how satisfying to have a central character who wins out over the ogre of a magician by being clever, and does not have to be rescued by anyone else; I based a story called “Bluebeard’s Egg” on this story and its relatives); “The Robber Bridegroom,” which I used in a novel called “The Robber Bride,” since if gender roles are to be distributed equally, there have to be villainesses as well as villains, and why should the Devil have all the good lines? And, finally, “The Goose Girl at the Well,” a haunting story that I still haven’t figured out to my own satisfaction. Not that one has to figure these stories out. The best of them have the force of myth. Their meaning is renewed with every fresh reading".
Tana French (author of The Likeness)
Favourite fictional hero: King Arthur in The Once and Future King, by T.H. WhiteI love T. H. White’s King Arthur in “The Once and Future King.” Arthur is such an iconic figure that in most versions of the legend he’s flattened under that weight into nothing but an icon, a pawn of the story; he’s not a three-dimensional human being. White makes him utterly human, and makes his greatness and heroism lie within that flawed humanity, rather than negating it. I read the book when my mother gave it to me to keep me occupied on a long-haul flight, and it was the first time I realized just how complex and contradictory characters (and adults, for that matter) could be.
sources 12345678it's a book post!