Sometimes in the middle of writing a novel, including The Memory of Animals, I suddenly feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. Not the usual pervading feeling of not knowing what I’m doing, which is a constant companion I’ve learned to live with, but a panicky feeling of being adrift. It’s not so much the story and where it’s going, but rather the style of my writing, the voice, the language I’m using. What I do then is turn to a book that has the sound that I’m aiming for and I open it at a random page and read for a while. And I’ve found that it will reset me; I suddenly get it, I’m back in the groove, until a few thousand words later when I need another writing reset.
by Richard Ford
Honestly, I can open this at literally any page and the simple language and complex meaning will calm my writing brain and make me think, ‘Oh, so that’s what I’m supposed to be doing.’
by Marion Coutts
This memoir is especially useful if I’m writing in the first person. It’s descriptive without being fussy; moving and emotional simply by being factual. Please Marion, write another book.
by Toni Morrison
I read it for the brilliant interior voices and the actions to show character or mood. Sethe folds some sheets: “Neither was completely dry but the folding felt too fine to stop.”
by Barbara Comyns
A lesson in how to write the uncanny and all types of weirdness without seeming to be aware that anything is slightly off.
by Denis Johnson
I dip into this for Johnson’s sublime sentence construction and how he moves and stops time, managing to fit almost a lifetime into one hundred and sixteen pages.
÷ ÷ ÷
Claire Fuller is the author most recently of
The Memory of Animals (Tin House). Her previous novels include
Our Endless Numbered Days, which won the Desmond Elliott Prize;
Swimming Lessons;
Bitter Orange; and
Unsettled Ground, which won the Costa Novel Award and was a finalist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Winchester and lives in Hampshire with her husband.