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| photo: Lizzy C. Hope | |
Felicity Everett grew up in Manchester, England, and attended Sussex University. After an early career in children's publishing and freelance writing that produced more than 25 works of children's fiction and nonfiction, Everett published her first adult novel, The Story of Us, in 2011. Her new book is The People at Number 9 (HQ/HarperCollins, August 8, 2017).
On your nightstand now:
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. Eleanor is a wonderful creation--a sad and dysfunctional woman who nevertheless has charm, humour and a backstory that elicits the reader's huge compassion.
Every Day Is Mother's Day by Hilary Mantel. I haven't started this yet, but I love Mantel's dark humour and the blurb suggests this one will be pitch black.
Tracks by Louise Erdrich. I'm savouring the economy and poetry of Erdrich's writing. It's also good to learn about the Native American experience, of which I'm shamefully ignorant.
Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Under-Rated Organ by Giulia Enders. Because I'm at that age.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. This is THE go-to book for empathy. I used to be scared of spiders as a child, and I can still get a bit silly if I find a hairy one in the shower, but I remember Charlotte and go running for a glass and a piece of cardboard, rather than turning the tap on!
Your top five authors:
Jonathan Franzen. I love the fact that Franzen's characters are flawed but empathic and often funny, also that they are very much products of the times they live in.
John Updike. Updike gets a lot of flak for misogyny, but I think he's pretty hard on his male characters, too. And for writing prose the way he did, he can be forgiven pretty much anything.
Anne Enright. Like Franzen, a slyly humorous demolisher of the family. Always repays a second reading.
Colm Tóibín. His writing is like a duck swimming on a pond--smooth and serene on the surface, one heck of a lot of paddling going on underneath.
Elizabeth Strout. Love, love, love Olive Kitteridge--for its sense of place, its complex and realistic depiction of character and the tightrope it walks between comedy and tragedy. Can't wait to start Anything Is Possible.
Book you've faked reading:
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer. I love Germaine, but this book was of its time, and I came to it a bit too late. 
Book you're an evangelist for:
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. The perfect comic novel. Unpretentious, economical and still laugh out loud funny more than half a century after it was written.
Book you've bought for the cover:
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry. I haven't started it yet, but it looks gorgeous.
Book you hid from your parents:
The Sensuous Woman by "J," for obvious reasons.
Book that changed your life:
The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell. It opened my eyes to the politics of class.
Favorite line from a book:
"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." --Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Five books you'll never part with:
Forever Young by Bob Dylan, illustrated by Paul Rogers
The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright, original 1960s Puffin edition
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee--set in the Slad Valley in Gloucestershire, where I now live.
An illustrated copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam that belonged to my Mum.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor. I read most of her books when they were re-published in the U.K. by Virago in the 1980s. I loved them and they influenced me as a writer, but I haven't really revisited them since. I'm going to start with Mrs P.
Work of art (any medium) that has moved you the most:
Robert Falls's 2005 production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, starring Brian Dennehy and Claire Higgins.