Hilary Boyd's debut novel, Thursdays in the Park, raced up bestseller lists in England last year. Dubbed "granny lit," it's the story of 59-year-old Jeanie, a mother and grandmother who finds love a second time around after her husband checks out of their marriage. A former health journalist, Boyd previously published six nonfiction books on step-parenting, depression, pregnancy and other health-related topics. She is married to film director Don Boyd and lives in London.
On your nightstand now:
Okay, I'm messy, so there's a stack--which my e-reader is reducing to some extent. Stack includes:
Skios, Michael Frayn, which made me laugh so much my husband, lying next to me in bed, was cheering when I finished it.
The Dalai Lama's How to Practise: The Way to a Meaningful Life, which has been there for ages because I keep hoping to become a better person. But perhaps just gazing at his face on the cover's not going to do it.
The Childhood of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee, which I found baffling and a bit ridiculous for such a brilliant writer.
May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes. I've only just started, but dark and funny so far. Dark is good.
Favorite book when you were a child:
My mother read to us a lot when we were small, mostly English classics. I think Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne was my favourite. I'm not big on personification of animals, but the wry and affectionate characterization of the toys is magic. Can't wait to read it to my granddaughters.
Your top five authors:
This is a bit like choosing from a huge menu then having to order really, really quickly before you change your mind!
Marilynne Robinson. Gilead is a work of genius.
George Eliot, Middlemarch etc. Pre-Freud, she could have been a shrink with her understanding of flawed--but intensely engaging--humanity. Dorothea Brooke is my heroine.
Cormac McCarthy. The Border Trilogy--elegiac, haunting, desolate. I'm in awe.
Émile Zola. I reckon he was the first novelist to create murderous bodice-ripper "realism" with novels such as La Bête Humaine and Nana. But Germinal breaks my heart on a whole other level.
Anne Tyler. Breathing Lessons etc. What's not to love!
Book you've faked reading:
Never have. Honest! I'm not being smug, I've just never felt any pressure to be well-read. However, there are sorry gaps in my reading, notably Moby Dick and Don Quixote, which I feel I should read for my own sake, but I JUST CAN'T DO IT!
Book you're an evangelist for:
Dutch writer Gerbrand Bakker's The Detour. Such a powerful novel about loneliness and the unsaid--almost ghostly and intensely moving.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Maybe I have, but I'm not aware of it. I don't have a design bone in my body.
Book that changed your life:
No question, The First Circle by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Back in the late '60s, my friend and I were hanging out on a beach in the Canaries, aged about 19, and I hooked up with this cute Hungarian American who was reading this and seemed more interested in the book than me! So I went home and bought it and was instantly obsessed. Till then I'd read lighter stuff: Daphne du Maurier, Agatha Christie etc. This was my real introduction to literary fiction, and after that there was no stopping me.
Favorite line from a book:
This is a cheat, because it's a poem. But it gets me every time. Seems perfect to me, almost not a poem, simple yet intriguing. You can taste the plums. He's sorry, but not sorry enough to have resisted the temptation!
"This Is Just to Say"
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
--William Carlos Williams
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx. The characters--again, totally flawed--are so powerfully drawn and engrossing. I was right there with them all, in that incredible landscape, bleak, harsh but also beautiful and somehow redemptive. I was gutted when it was over.