Amanda Craig tells us what she would title her memoirs, which book reduces her to tears and the 19th century literary heart throb her husband
most looks like.
1) What are you reading at the moment?
I always read several books at once, so it’s Richard Bradford’s Martin Amis biography (review), Julia Jones’s A Ravelled Flag (children’s review), Anthony Horowitz’s new Sherlock Holmes novel The House of Silk (fun) and Anthony Trollope’s The Belton Estate (fun.)
2) As a child, what did you read under the covers?
Almost everything, because if a book isn’t worth reading under the covers it isn’t worth reading at all. The kind of book people read in public is always a form of ostentation.
3) Has a book ever made you cry, and if so which one?
I weep copiously at many Dickens novels, especially Joe Gargery’s forgiveness of Pip in Great Expectations.
4) You are about to be put into solitary confinement for a year and allowed to take three books. What would you choose?
Chaucer’s A Canterbury Tales because it contains a whole world of people and stories, and its language would slow me down. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair because it would remind me of literary London at its worst. George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, because I would miss my husband, and her kind, intelligent and handsome Jewish hero is very like him.
5) Which literary character would you most like to sleep with?
See above. Though Hamlet would also have been an entertaining challenge.
6) If you could write a self-help book, what would you call it?
‘Cry No More, Ladies: why laughter is the best pesticide.’
7) Michael Gove has asked you to rewrite the GCSE English Literature syllabus. Which book, which play, and which poem would you make compulsory reading?
Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children, a black comedy about terrible parenting. Terry Johnson’s Hysteria, about Freud, surrealism and terrible parenting. Carol Ann Duffy’s Last Post, which almost makes you think poetry might have the power to stop people killing each other.
8) Which party from literature would you most like to have attended?
Bilbo Baggins’s unexpected tea party in the Hobbit, not least because, as a woman, I wouldn’t have been invited.
9) What would you title your memoirs?
‘Let Other Pens Dwell On Misery’.
10) Which literary character do you dream of playing?
Circe – provided I could also turn one or two people into pigs.
11) What book would you give to a lover?
Andrew Marvell’s complete poetry.
12) Spying Mein Kampf or Dan Brown on someone’s bookshelf can spell havoc for a friendship. What’s your literary dealbreaker?
Coetzee’s Disgrace
Fleur Macdonald is editor of The Omnivore.
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