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| photo: Vivienne McMaster | |
Zoey Leigh Peterson was born in England, grew up in the United States and now lives in Canada. Her short fiction has appeared in a range of journals and has been anthologized in The Journey Prize Stories and Best Canadian Stories. Her first novel, Next Year, For Sure (Scribner, March 7, 2017), is a luminous portrait of a great love pushed to the edge.
On your nightstand now:
I have about a dozen books I'm in the middle of, but right now I am most actively reading The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu. I've been meaning to read it for years, but a friend just put it into my hands. It's everything I want in a book right now--intimate and vulnerable and sincere. And funny! I just want to devour it, but I'm forcing myself to go slow and really savor it.
Favorite book when you were a child:
There were so many, but here's one I still think about almost every day: Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars by Daniel M. Pinkwater. I've ruined so many of my childhood favorites by re-reading them as an adult, but this one I've resolved to keep safe in my fuzzy childhood memory.
Your top five authors:
I've always been bad at favorites, but here are the five authors I most urgently crave a new book from: Hanya Yanagihara, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jenny Offill, Claire Messud and Sarah Shun-lien Bynum. If one of these folks had a book coming out tomorrow, I would be standing outside the bookstore when it opened.
Book you've faked reading:
I was about to say I'd never faked reading a book, but then I remembered all of high school. I was a big reader, but I simply could not bring myself to read anything that had been assigned. I once bluffed my way through a lengthy essay exam on Wuthering Heights based on skimming the first page and a half of the novel while the exam was being handed out. Years later, I finally got around to reading Wuthering Heights on my own and I loved it. But when it was assigned to me, I was really into Anna Karenina and had no time for Heathcliff's nonsense.
Book you're an evangelist for:
I work in a library, and I cannot count how many patrons I have turned on to Sarah Shun-lien Bynum's Ms. Hempel Chronicles. And I always pitch it as a story cycle. I know it's packaged as a novel, but I think it's actually one of the best story cycles ever written. Definitely one of my desert-island books.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Clear winner here: Merritt Tierce's Love Me Back--the original Doubleday cover. I cannot imagine how a cover could be more perfectly suited to the title and the themes and the tone of a book. And the fact that its neon sign is unlit--ugh, it hurts me it's so good.
Book you hid from your parents:
I hid everything else from my parents, but never books.
Book that changed your life:
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley. I'd always thought of myself as a writer--I wrote my first "novel" when I was eight years old. But when I was in my early 20s, I stumbled across this book in a library, read the first story standing there in front of the shelf, put it back on the shelf and decided to stop being a writer. There were a lot of reasons, but part of it was reading that Grace Paley story and realizing that I couldn't write the book I needed to write. So I stopped writing and did other things with my life. Twenty years later, I stumbled across the book once again in a used bookstore, read the same story right there in the store, and decided to start writing again.
Favorite line from a book:
For years, I've been filling notebooks with favorite lines from whatever I'm reading at the moment. I must have thousands. But flipping through those notebooks now and seeing how my tastes and interests have morphed over the years, I'm most reminded of this line from Joan Didion's essay on the importance of keeping a notebook: "I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not."
Five books you'll never part with:
I used to have a hardcover copy of The Abortion by Richard Brautigan. If I could find another one of those, I promise I would never part with it again. Ditto Sarah Van Arsdale's sublimely poetic novel Toward Amnesia, which I've read so many times that my paperback copy is falling apart. Three more in that vein: In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje, Reasons for Living by Amy Hempel and All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang. If I could find acid-free, hardbound editions that I could read over and over for the rest of my life, I would never let them out of my possession.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
I think I actually prefer re-reading to reading for the first time. Sometimes I'll be just a dozen pages into an amazing new book and think, "I can't wait to read this book again." But here's one exception: The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I'm not sure it holds up to repeated readings, but I'd love to be able to read it again for the first time, just for the pure gratification of watching his slow, elaborate revenge unfold.
Your current reading obsession:
I recently started working on my second novel, so right now I'm obsessed with transcendent second novels. I'm making a real study of it: Philip Larkin's A Girl in Winter, Hanya Yanagihara's A Little Life. Open to recommendations!