One of the things you’re advised to do when you’re trying to write novels is to read lots of other books, and so I have been reading and re reading a lot of favourite novels recently. Not the classics – though I love Jane Austen and F Scott Fitzgerald of course – but the books which are more in line with the kind of novel I’m trying to write.
There are three books in particular which I think are so beautifully written I wish I’d written them. The words flow so naturally, so effortlessly, and the characterisation is quite brilliant. Two of them have been made into films with varying degrees of success – One Day was DISASTROUS as a movie but so perfect on the page, while I enjoyed I Don’t Know How She Does It enormously. And of course no one writes quite like Marian Keyes (who is now following me on Twitter – *swoon* – I strongly urge you to follow her if you don’t already, her tweets are like mini-novels in themselves).
Which books do you wish you’d written, and why?
Oh and The Snail and the Whale! Kids book but made me cry the first time I read it to my toddler!
To Kill a Mockingbird.
I just wish she (I mean, I) had written more…
Not a novel, but I would like to have written an influential book like “Nickel and Dimed”.
1984, First Frost (any of the original Frost series), anything by Lee Child because they’re ripping yarns… I don’t do girl books I have to admit…
If I’d had any of their gifts: the historical Dorothy Dunnetts, Sunne In Splendour by Sharon Penman, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Alchemist by Paul Coelho, The Kite Runner by Khaild Hosseini but perhaps my first choice would be Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser – who started my love of history in my teens
I remember thinking that Behind the Scenes at the Museum was exactly the kind of book I’d like to write. And one of those novels that you think ‘so simple, I’m sure I could write something like that’ when of course, I bleddy couldn’t get close!