Which Venetian murder left Emma Healey cold in all the wrong ways?
Bestselling author, Emma Healey
What book…
… are you reading now?
TonyInterruptor by Nicola Barker. This unique novel coalesces around a small incident during a jazz concert, but is really a series of playful, funny conversations between people tangentially related to that incident.
Many questions are asked about the meaning of art and truth in the current social and political climate, but there is a tenderness for the humans in the story too, and I love Barker’s hilariously stretched similes.
… would you take to a desert island?
The Diary Of A Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield. It’s warm, funny and infinitely re-readable. The intimate and honest nature of the voice would make me feel like I had a (slightly flustered) friend close by, too.
Ideally, I’d like to have the whole series, including the books in which the Provincial Lady goes to America and Russia, and tries to find meaningful work during the Second World War. They’re all equally amusing and insightful.
… first gave you the reading bug?
Healey’s first experience of a perpetually disappointed and despairing protagonist
The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend. (Another diary!)
This was the first book I liked enough to read standing up. I read it when my mother was training to become a London Guide, and I remember slouching against all the major monuments while she practised her historical spiels.
I wasn’t quite a teenager, but I was ready for a novel with a perpetually disappointed and even despairing protagonist.
And I loved having to read between the lines to understand what was really going on in Adrian’s world, what he was missing or misinterpreting. It taught me a lot about the importance of the gap between the reader and the narrator.
… left you cold?
Everything by Thomas Mann. I find his books a slog – the long, finickity sentences, the overly detailed description, the pedantic explanations of characters’ lineage. I couldn’t even get through the short Death In Venice.
I know he is beloved by many, but I just can’t get on with him. However, I used to think this about Joseph Conrad, and I changed my mind, so I suppose there’s still hope.
Sweat by Emma Healey (Penguin, £9.99) is available now in paperback from the Mail Bookshop