Because she fears her father's explosive reactions, Silvie guards herself. Forced to participate in the archeological reenactment, Silvie attempts to navigate her father's cruelty in the context of the Professor and his students, Molly, Dan, and Pete.Īt the start of the summer and the beginning of the narrative, Silvie is markedly withdrawn. As the only child of her powerless mother Alison and her abusive father Bill, Silvie has little agency and struggles to find her voice and fight her desires to defy her father's dominance. Free UK p&p on all online orders over £15.Silvie is the first person narrator and 17-year-old protagonist of the novel. Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss is published by Granta (£8.99). Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs Tove Jansson’s short stories Felicity Ford’s Knitsonik Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook, which is a sermon against despair as well as a book about knitting. I’d become deeply embattled about not reading at home and school and then I went to stay with her one half term and she said: “Right, love, now they’ve all gone shall we sort out this reading business?” She let me climb down with my dignity intact and I went home reading Arthur Ransome. My grandmother, a retired infant school teacher, taught me to read when I was six and everyone else had given up. My favourite is predictably the least successful, Signs for Lost Children. The book I’d most like to be remembered for and Other Stories, Elanor Dymott’s Silver & Salt. Miriam Toews’s All My Puny Sorrows, Eley Williams’s Attrib. I’ve moved my eyes over the pages, but that’s not always reading. The book I’m most ashamed not to have read Nicola Barker’s wildness and capacity for the absurd often delight me. I was appropriately and memorably disturbed by Mercè Rodoreda’s brilliant Death in Spring. I don’t believe in tears as a currency of literary criticism. Generally I’m happy to start more books than I finish. It’s very good but I overestimated my capacity for 900 pages of mid-20th century German experimental prose.
Most recently, Albert Vigoleis Thelen, The Island of Second Sight. Most good books change readers’ minds a little, that’s what they are for. The last book that made me cry? I don’t believe in tears as a currency of literary criticism I think it’s called The Great American Novel. The one where the white male American literature/history professor has a midlife crisis and sleeps with a student he despises, thus ending the marriage to the wife he despises and obliging him to move in with the mother he despises. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel showed me the literary possibilities of historical fiction in a new way. The one I promised my US editor last year …
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