Growing Rich by Fay Weldon:
This has been a repeat read for me since I was about fourteen. It’s about three teenage best friends from East Anglia who are tempted away from their dreary lives by the devil, disguised as a chauffeur to a rich old man with a crush on Carmen, the gobbiest girl of the friendship group. I adore it, love Fay Weldon’s voice; from the topics she chooses to write about to the fearlessness of how she puts her stories to the page. She is very missed.
Milkman by Anna Burns:
I listened to the first part of this book on audiobook, but was so invested I began reading along too, caught by the lyrical stream of consciousness of the unnamed narrator, a young woman believed by her community to be having an affair with a milkman who isn’t really a milkman at all. It's unique and totally brilliant.
Carrie by Stephen King:
I read Stephen King voraciously through my teens and ever since. I believe in his horror because I believe in his characters and his debut novel Carrie is heartbreaking, terrifying and special. I am especially attached to the folklore of how halfway through writing Carrie Stephen threw it away, but his wife rescued it from the rubbish and insisted he finish it. Exactly the kind of story I treasured as a hopeful writer!
The Sound Mirror by Heidi James:
The Sound Mirror is a multigenerational story of women hampered by circumstance. Human and domestic, stifled yet connected, it’s a hauntingly beautiful book which I buy regularly as a gift. It’s the sort of book where upon finishing it, I must instantly seek out everything else the author’s written. Heidi James is marvellous.
Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden:
I could go into raptures over how Salena Godden’s poetry has always made me feel. Here, Salena narrates the tale of Mrs Death, a working-class elderly black woman – and Death herself – ready to tell her story through Wolf, a young writer. It’s perfect, I think, original and a book that you can open at random on finishing and find something truthful and necessary to keep with you.
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