My Life in Books: Reading ‘Adrian Mole’ made me want to be a writer
Lynda Marron: Mary Wesley’s quirky and uplifting 'An Imaginative Experience' inspired my debut, 'Last Chance in Paris'.
Lynda Marron lives in Bishopstown, Cork, and published her debut novel, in 2024. Her latest book, (Eriu) is out now in paperback, eBook and audio.
by Katherine Mezzacappa. Also, my notebook. The best ideas come knocking at dawn.
For comfort, I love the sass and wisdom of mid-century women writers like Dorothy Whipple ( ), Elizabeth von Armin ( ), and EM Delafield ( ). Barbara Kingsolver ( ) always gives me hope about the world, and David Nicholls ( ) has never let me down.
has been looking down on me from my shelves for 35 years. I read a lot of big novels in college, but Pasternak defeated me. I can’t part with it now. It’s like the snowball in the freezer; it takes up space but reminds me of a happy time.
by Sue Townsend. When Adrian wrote ‘I am an intellectual, but at the same time I am not very clever’, I knew I’d found my hero. More directly, Mary Wesley’s quirky and uplifting inspired my debut, . That Wesley was 70 when her first novel was published left me, at 40-something, with no excuse.
I want to read about flawed characters being put through the wringer of real life, then to see them coming out the other side with something learned and a bit of hope. Kent Haruf’s trilogy, Gráinne Murphy’s , and by Willy Vlautin all made me smile.
by Julian Barnes. It’s a treatise on memory (what we keep and what we lose), and it’s his valedictory note. It’s morbidly funny and poignant, and brave. Reading it felt personal. A beautiful thing.
It took considerable convincing to make me pick up an 856-page door-stopper about aging cowboys herding cattle, but Larry McMurtry’s changed my mind about Westerns. I followed up with Sebastian Barry’s and Kevin Barry’s . Who knew Westerns were so romantic?
In , a memoir of the Apollo 11 mission, astronaut Michael Collins taught me that the guy who took one great leap for mankind could never have got home without the guy who sat waiting, alone, on the dark side of the moon.
Hopeful books. Funny books. Books that ease the pain and let the reader know they are not alone.
by Edna O’Brien, by John McGahern and by Claire Keegan, to understand where we were and how far we’ve come. Paul Lynch’s , Orwell’s , and Cormac McCarthy’s to see where we must not go.
is a work of unparalleled wit and warmth. Oh, to be immortalised on screen by Gonzo the Great!
For new books, Leaf and Bower in Ballincollig, Waterstones and Dubray in Cork. For old, Prim’s in Kinsale and Vibes and Scribes in Cork.
Alphabetised: André Aciman to Marcus Zusak.
Americano, please, and a fat cheese toastie.
Laura from . I think of her whenever I see a rose with even a hint of blue.
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