Lily King, the Women's Prize-shortlisted author, opens up about her literary journey, from childhood obsessions to later-life discoveries.
Earliest Reading Memory
King recalls her mother reading The Little Engine That Could to her at night. 'One day I could read it myself. I read it over and over in bed, the story of a valiant little train making it over the mountain when all the bigger ones refused. The thrill never got old. I must have been four.'
Favourite Book Growing Up
She was 'obsessed' with Judy Blume. Her favourite was It's Not the End of the World, told in first person, which was a revelation. 'Blume helped me see at age nine how all the drama and craziness and humour and meaning is right here in everyday life.'
The Book That Changed Me as a Teenager
Reading Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio at 14 or 15 solidified her desire to be a writer. 'Like George Willard, I lived in a small town and was an observer. The writing in that book made me ache to do it even more.'
Writers Who Changed My Mind
In grad school, she met Laura McNeal and read Virginia Woolf for the first time. 'The writing of each of these women changed mine. I'd been skating on the surface before.'
The Book That Made Me Want to Be a Writer
Again, Blume's It's Not the End of the World. 'I very distinctly remember being on my twin bed reading that book and deciding to be a writer. I thought I would write for kids, books exactly like hers. It still surprises me that that's not how it turned out.'
The Author I Came Back To
King hated Pride and Prejudice at 16, unable to get past the first 20 pages. But when heartbroken, she picked it up again and it was a revelation. 'I have read all of Jane Austen's books many times now. I always return to them, Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice a bit more than the others.'
The Book I Reread
Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury is another she didn't appreciate in high school but has revisited. 'Most of American history, past and future, can be found in that book published in 1929.'
The Book I Could Never Read Again
King hesitates: The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough. 'How I swooned over that book as a teenager. But I think it's best to let that saga of a priest falling in love with a little girl remain vague in my memory.'
The Book I Discovered Later in Life
Tove Jansson's The Summer Book was recommended for years, and finally last summer she read it. 'Never have I read a book that captures more fully the feeling of being alive.'
Currently Reading
King juggles multiple books: Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, Charlotte Wood's Stone Yard Devotional, Jayne Anne Phillips' Small Town Girls, and for research, Seymour Hersh's The Dark Side of Camelot, David Talbot's The Devil's Chessboard, and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, which is 'blowing my mind'.
My Comfort Read
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith is 'an underrated novel that is pure delight'.
King's novel Heart the Lover is shortlisted for the Women's Prize.
