‘When I’m sad, I return to George Eliot’ … Lauren Groff. Photograph: Rick Wilson/
THE BOOKS OF MY LIFE
The US author on the book she should never have read as a child; the thrill of Emily Dickinson, and falling in love with Vasily Grossman
Lauren Groff
Friday 29 September 2023
My earliest reading memory
I was an early reader because I was excruciatingly shy, and books alleviated some of the discomfort of existing as a tender little person in the world. I remember lying in my bed at naptime, picking up a Little Bear book, and being able to read, “carrots, potatoes, peas, and tomatoes”, the words just clicking out of abstraction and into focus all of a sudden. Whether this is an invented memory or not is another story.
My favourite book growing up
I was publicly wild about children’s books such as My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George and the Nancy Drew stories; in private, I’d picked up Jean M Auel’s epic The Clan of the Cave Bear from my parents’ bookshelf at far too young an age, and was permanently scarred by brutal Neanderthal sex that I didn’t understand (yet I still reread the book obsessively with a flashlight in my closet).
The book that changed me as a teenager
When I was 12, my friend Lisa gave me an Emily Dickinson anthology for my birthday; those poems, so deceptively simple, were like bolts of lightning to my brain. I became a poet in secret, writing toward the kind of thrill I felt with her poems.
The writer who changed my mind
I was far too serious as an adolescent and mostly read dead writers. I knew intellectually that there were living authors who were making books; I didn’t think it was possible that they were ordinary women like me until I got to university and read a short story by the great Grace Paley.
The book that made me want to be a writer
Every time it feels as if my writing is going through a fallow period, I discover a book that reminds me why I want to be a writer. This often happens: the last time was a week ago, when I reread Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.
The book I came back to
I had swung three times at Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate before finally connecting, then I fell profoundly in love with this astonishing constellation of a book.
The book I reread
Dante’s Inferno hits you differently when you’re a teenager in love with the imagery and sound and balletic leaps of poetry from when you are midway through the journey of life and feeling a little lost. And there’s no better book for when you’re feeling vindictive towards your enemies.
The book I could never read again
There are a lot of books I’ve read for entertainment and not art. That said, it feels churlish, after all that pleasure, to kiss and tell.
The book I discovered later in life
I thought I was a Virginia Woolf completist until I picked up Flush. What a delightfully bananas novel.
The book I am currently reading
I am about to start a book by Danielle Dutton called Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other; I loved Margaret the First, and will follow Dutton happily wherever she takes me.
My comfort read
When I’m sad, I return to George Eliot, to be held in Middlemarch’s warm wisdom.
