Ali Smith: “Henry James made me run down the garden path and scream loudly” | books

My first memory is reading
I apparently taught myself to read when I was three through the stickers on the Beatles 45’s we had: I remember the moment of recognizing the words ‘I’, ‘feel’ and ‘fine’. It took a little longer to extract the word “Parlophone”.

My favorite book growing up
Sister Vincent taught sixth form at St Joseph’s School, Inverness, and was a distinguished reader with very good taste, as well as a kind of literary rectitude that meant she removed Enid Blyton from the classroom library because she thought Blyton’s books were written by a factory of writers. In 1972, she and I had a heated argument when the class was choosing a book to be read aloud to us, and I was in favor of “Charlotte’s Web” by E. B. White, which I loved. Sister Vincent put her foot on the ground. “No, because animals speak in it, and in fact animals do not speak.” I recently reread it for the first time since I was nine, and it moved me to tears. What a wonderful book, about all kinds of language, injustice, the power of imagination, and friendship in the face of life’s harsh realities. amazing. radiant. modest.

The book that changed me as a teenager
Liz Lochhead’s Spring Notebook. One evening when I was sixteen, I was sitting with my wonderful English teacher at Inverness High School, Anne McKay. While raiding her bookshelves, she found a very thin book, with no spine, just hinges, and by a young Scottish woman and a poet (at this time a rare combination). The poems in it were very good, moving and clear, and written in a Scottish English which I knew was close to my own, but which I had never read in a book. I read it twice that evening and then Anne lent it to me for a week. You filled me with excitement and hope.

The writer who changed my mind
See above. Liz Lochhead. It changed what was possible – for many of us.

Books that made me want to be a writer
Reading some authors does that for me on an ongoing basis. Muriel Spark. Toni Morrison. Morrison’s works are a sustained, courageous lesson in how the vitality of writing can transform the energy of life, and Spark’s Hanging Out with Intention, like all of her books, will never fail to send me on my way elated.

the The author is me Reread
Much of Simone de Beauvoir’s writing was translated into affordable paperback translation when I was in my early twenties. At that time I read everything I could get my hands on. Lately I’ve loved re-encountering her novels. I think her novels are wonderful, especially Les Belles Images (1966), a brilliant post-war satire about the performance of happiness. I also never stop re-reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a book that will always remind its readers to remain fluid and adaptable no matter the crazy changing times.

The book that I could never read again
never say never. I promise I’ll try Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Villette again, but not now, okay?

Writers I discovered later in life
Vladimir Nabokov. What pure bright joy. Fyodor Dostoevsky. Where have you been all the years? Henry James. I read “The Bowl of Gold” in the garden not long ago and found myself running down our garden path and shouting loudly to my partner: “Sarah! Sarah! The bowl of gold is broken! I broke the bowl of gold!”“

The book I’m currently reading
Liadan Ni Chuen, everyone is still here. These stories about Ireland and recent history confront the reality of life in a way that little new writing I’ve read does. In doing so they change and recharge the potential of the short story form. They have already become two of my favorite stories of all time.

Read my palm
Summer Book by Tove Jansson. A piece of perfection composed of loss, light, clarity and good nature – a book so elegant that it could easily fit into a jacket pocket but containing so much of everything that really matters in life.