My earliest reading memory
In order to check out books at the local library you had to be able to sign your name in cursive. I practised obsessively, grateful that my mother had opted for a short name, as writing has always been difficult. I am dyslexic, a fact that gave me an early (and unresolved) case of impostor syndrome. Each time we went to the library, I stocked up. The formative books of my childhood were all set in New York City: EB White’s Stuart Little, the story of a small mouse who lived a seemingly regular life with his adoptive human family, who made him, clothing and his own canoe. Kay Thompson’s Eloise, of the famed Plaza hotel, and Bernard Waber’s Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, about a toothy character who lived with the Primm family in the house on East 88th Street.
The book that changed me as a teenager
In the summer of 1972, my parents, who were philosophically and economically opposed to vacations, rented a house in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, for two weeks. The house turned out to have only one bedroom, with five twin beds. Everyone was miserable except me – I swam in the pool that belonged to the hotel next door. It was the summer of Watergate, the summer Ms Magazine launched, and I was 11 years old, reading the most amazing and horrifying books. The Terminal Man, Michael Crichton’s novel about mind control, was top of my list – a line describing the coarseness of a single male pubic hair still haunts me. Also that summer, I read Will There Really Be a Morning, the autobiography of Frances Farmer. The book is the brutal story of Farmer, an actor, who was committed to a psychiatric hospital. The fear of incarceration, of mental illness, of not being seen for who one is, of being so disappointing or frightening to one’s own family that they send you away, was terrifying. For me, something changed that summer: I went in as one person and came out as another.
The writer who changed my mind
Margaret Atwood. I used to believe that it was not important as a writer to look at the world through a feminist lens. And yet the sustained brilliance of Atwood’s oeuvre, the precision with which she demonstrates the power of the female gaze – or rather, glare – has made it clear to me how essential it is for the female point of view to be equally represented.
The book that made me want to be a writer
JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Remember how Holden Caulfield had a dead brother? Well, I had a dead brother. And remember the brother’s baseball mitt? I had my dead brother’s baseball mitt. And remember how everything felt fake and phoney to Holden? Well, welcome to my world. As an adopted person trying to blend into a grieving family who had recently lost a child, there was always the sense that nothing was quite right – no one was saying what they really felt.
The book I came back to
Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. I was taking a summer course in postmodernist fiction and when the time came to read this book, I found it frightening, so trippy. It left me so undone that I dropped the class. I kept my copy of the book but have been for ever afraid to open it, as though the pages themselves might be a hallucinogen. In time, I have come to admire Pynchon deeply. Without his work, I would never have got around to mine.
The book I reread
I have often returned to the collected stories of John Cheever and Richard Yates. They were formative in my literary development for their ability to use language to identify and explore what was hidden under the surface: for deftly illustrating ambivalence and hidden tensions, the unspoken fear of failure and the split between the public and private self.
The book I could never read again
Michael Bond’s Paddington. It’s not that I wouldn’t enjoy it now, but more that I want to remember Paddington as I first experienced him. Paddington from “darkest Peru” with his hat and his beaten-up suitcase, duffle coat and love of marmalade. Paddington is also a story of adoption, and so it will always have my heart. I was the thing that didn’t quite fit into the family. As for marmalade, only in recent years have I tried it and come to find it is divine, nectar from another world. And yes, the brief clip of Queen Elizabeth and Paddington having tea, and the Queen saving a sandwich in her purse for later, is my idea of perfection.
The book I discovered later in life
Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, published in 1962. I didn’t read it until I was doing research for my novel The Unfolding. I wanted to see how other authors explored the frustrations of women’s lives, the expectations surrounding marriage and motherhood and the persistent social constructions about how women should sound and behave. The structure of The Golden Notebook was experimental for its time; 60 years later one can still say it captures the fragmentation of identity, desire and ambition that is central to the female experience.
The book I am reading
Richard Powers’s Bewilderment – Powers is the American novelist for the 21st century. His work explores the impact of science and technology and the moral and social implications of our actions in deeply human ways. I am also reading Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You, a family mosaic, about a Jamaican family in Miami living in a world filled with hope and contradiction.
• The Unfolding by AM Homes is published by Granta. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
