The writer's choice
Ten authors tell Village about their favourite books and why they mean so much to them. Compiled by Edward O'HareColum McCann
“At this time of year it always seems like I end up getting entangled in some sort of literary Olympics. Writers always get asked what their best books of the year are, or even what are the best books of the decade or the century. It's an impossible question. The idea of having a ‘favourite' is a different proposition. It's just as difficult but not as confining. A favourite book is one that gets dog-eared. It's not necessarily the ‘best', but it is one that lodges a quiver in the heart. As a child my favourite book was The Second Best Children in the World by Mary Lavin. As a teenager it was The Great Gatsby and then it was Kerouac's On the Road. A succession of favourite books has become my way of life now. But if there's one book that I would give to children and adults alike – a sort of joyous take on the world – it's Fup by Jim Dodge, a tiny, open, funny, heartbreaking little fable which is, on one hand, about a duck (it's hard not to miss the anagram, FupDuck) and on the other hand a serious examination of what myth and survival mean. It's not Joyce, nor Berger, nor O'Brien, nor Harrison, nor Ondaatje, nor DeLillo, nor Mandlestam (who are all amongst my favourites as well), but it is one of the those quiet beauties that can take your breath away.”
More Colum McCann's latest novel Zoli is published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson
Stephern Price
“Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall is the funniest book ever written, whilst F Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned is funny and sad. Both were superb early novels. I love Raymond Chandler for his dialogue and terse descriptions, as in The Big Sleep, and Flannery O'Connor mastered economy in her collection A Good Man is Hard to Find. When I was young, The Magus by John Fowles blew me away, as did Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano. I give anyone who hasn't read it Patrick Suskind's Perfume as a Christmas present, but my all-time favourite novel is Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night.”
More Stephen Price's The Christmas Club is out now on New Island Books
Christine Dwyer Hickey
“A few years ago while dying of throat cancer, the late journalist John Diamond wrote a piece for the Observer Review citing his reasons to keep on living. To re-read Great Expectataions by Charles Dickens was one. I had read it once and remembered it as a highly enjoyable and absorbing experience. Diamond inspired me to have another go at it. It is an extraordinary work, written by a writer with an uncanny and wierdly cinematic eye; sweeping panaromas and terrifying close-ups. It is also one of the best novels written ever, on the human condition. In Great Expectations a world is created where all aspects are covered, all dark and light; all strengths and weaknesses. One for a Christmas fireside. No need to wait for last orders.”
More Christine Dwyer Hickey's The Gatemaker is published by New Island Books
Dermot Bolger
“The tiny new red-coloured New Writers Press edition of Michael Hartnett's Selected Poems (which was first published in 1972 when he was the extremely young age of just 26 and looked around 10 years younger on the author photo) is by no means the best book ever published – or indeed even the best book ever published by Hartnett, who was to die far too early in 1999 – but to me as a young writer when I discovered a copy of it in my late teens, it was like an incendiary devise, opening up my imagination to all kinds of possible ways of seeing the world. I have read far more important books since then, but none more influential to me at the uncertain stage of my life that I was at then when I encountered this remarkable voice and presence. Of all the books on my shelves, this is the one it would cause me most pain to ever part with.”
More Dermot Bolger's latest novel The Family on Paradise Pier is published by Harper Perennial
Deidre Purcell
“My outstanding novel of 2006 was Robert Harris' novel Imperium. Its main achievement is how lightly it wears its considerable research. Did you know that the Roman punishment for murdering your father was to be flayed alive, sewn into a sack with a dog, a viper and a cockerel, then thrown in the Tiber? Such details are woven so skilfully into the background that they never distract from the reader's involvement in the characters' lives and personalities. The plot revolves around the real-life character of Cicero, poet and lawyer of the Roman Empire. It is narrated by Tito, his trusted scribe and slave, and set around the time that the rebel Spartacus was creating a bit of bother in the regions and Julius Caesar was but an ambitious pup. Cicero emerges as a fascinating, flawed character, whose own overweening ambition to become Consul of Rome led him into some dodgy political machinations. This book can also be read as a metaphor for George Bush's America and I am sure that Pompeii, Imperium's predecessor, will be my outstanding read for 2007.”
More Deirdre Purcell's memoir Diamonds and Holes in My Shoes is published by HodderHeadline Ireland
Gerladine O'Neill
“My favourite book is The Bridges oj Madison County by Robert James Waller. It tells the story of a travelling photographer, Robert Kincaid, and Francesca Johnson, who is in a cold, loveless marriage. In four days, they discover a passion and love which changes their lives forever. I started reading this book at about eight o'clock at night and I couldn't put it down. I finished it in three hours and then I cried my heart out and read it again! Basically it was the sense of loss about two people who were soul mates and obviously meant to be together. Whilst I understood the reason for Francesca initially not leaving her family, I couldn't understand why she didn't move heaven and earth to be with Robert Kincaid when the time was right.”
More Geraldine O'Neill's new novel The Flowers of Ballygrace is published by Poolbeg
Patrick McCabe
“My favourite book of 2006 was Jack of Jumps by the cultural historian David Seabrook. It is a fascinating study of the dark cellars and basements of London in the so-called ‘swinging sixties', which turns its torch on the winding alleys and back entries of the post-war UK, revealing a city of thieves and amateur abortionists but also of beat music and milk vending machines. This is the world of the Krays and of Parade and Carnival magazines. There's a killer on the loose – he may be a famous boxer called Freddie Mills, he may not.”
More Patrick McCabe's latest novel Winterwood is published by Bloomsbury
Claire Kilroy
“I recall reading Lolita on the top deck of my school bus, on one of those still autumnal afternoons that fills you with nostalgia for the summer just gone. I was 16 and this experience proved pivotal. Nabokov said Lolita was partly inspired by an article about the first ever drawing produced by an animal. The unfortunate creature, an ape, had sketched the bars of its cage. Like Nabokov's ape, all I saw was my cage, my dreary future, until Lolita. The volcanic prose, messy rapture, tender adoration, cloying shame – finally, I'd glimpsed the escape hatch, and the tools with which to pry it open.”
More Claire Kilroy's latest novel Tenderwire is published by Faber and Faber
Nuala O'Faolain
“My most loved book of all time is Remembrance of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. I've been dropping in, in New York, on a study group where they've been reading the book at the rate of 100 pages a month and they've got through it twice in seven years. At the end, all anybody wants to do is start again, to be in the company of the novelist whose every thought and feeling is newly created. As for the great books of 2006, I have John Le Carre's The Mission Song for the plane coming home for Christmas. I love the old boy. The English are such romantics.”
More Nuala O'Faolain's novel The Story of Chicago May is published by Michael Joseph