Author Jane Flett shares the books that have shaped her life and writing, from heart-wrenching novels to poetry that finds magic in the ordinary.
A Novel That Breaks and Inspires
Rebecca Makkai's The Great Believers is a brilliant, sprawling novel that tackles the AIDS crisis and its aftermath. It's the third time I've read it and every time it breaks my heart but also leaves me full of furious hope. The novel draws parallels between the lives of gay men in the 1980s and The Lost Generation: two groups who faced devastation and responded with art and protest and fierce solidarity. I love any novel about community and Makkai nails that here. This book reminds me that defiance is the antidote to despair, which is something that feels more salient today than ever.
Poetry for a Desert Island
Ada Limón's poetry collection Bright Dead Things is a book I could read every day for the rest of my life and never get bored. She's not afraid to be earnest about the small magic of ordinary things: airports, plastic Miracle Fish, neon-green carrot tops. At the same time, she gets into the big stuff: ageing, death, grief. If I were stranded, these are the poems I'd trust to make the world feel endurable and me less alone.
The Book That Gave Me the Reading Bug
All of Roald Dahl's twisted children's books, but especially The Witches. That was my first experience of a book giving me a nightmare (and the realisation that I delighted in nightmare fuel and was keen to wake in the night with terror again). My deep love of Stephen King was probably seeded by those witches with their claws hidden in fancy gloves, just waiting to exterminate any child who got too close.
The Book That Left Me Cold
Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon was compulsory reading for Aberdonian schoolchildren of my generation and the last book I was forced to stick with that I really didn't enjoy (these days, if I hate a book, I happily cast it aside). How I railed against it to my English teacher, Mrs Giles! My 15-year-old self was utterly indignant we were being taught the role of good women was to stay at home and suffer at the hands of broken men. But that book also made me want to write a different kind of female character: one who got to be reckless and messy on her own terms, rather than just enduring what the world threw at her.
Welcome To The Chaoskampf by Jane Flett (Doubleday, £18.99) is available now from the Mail Bookshop.
