The book I am currently reading
The Friendly Ones by Philip Hensher. I’m loving it – he has got such a wide range of characters and the story is gripping.
The book that changed my life
The Family from One End Street by Eve Garnett. It’s a children’s book about a dustman’s family. I read it when I was eight, way back in the 1950s. Suddenly here was a story about children who didn’t have ponies and didn’t go to boarding school. The Ruggles children had unfortunate haircuts and drooping hems and plimsolls, just like me. It showed me that children’s books had a far wider range than I’d realised – and poor kids could be taken seriously.
The book I wished I’d written
That would be The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, because it’s so sharp and poetic and groundbreaking. I wouldn’t have wanted to be her though.
The book that influenced me
When I was in my early teens I was obsessed by Rumer Godden’s The Greengage Summer and knew passages by heart, but I don’t think it actually influenced my writing.
The book that is most underrated/overrated
The Old Wives’ Tale by Arnold Bennett is underrated nowadays. It’s a very shrewd, psychologically profound novel – and a great read too. I can’t help feeling Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is very overrated.
The last book that made me cry
The Language of Kindness by Chrissie Watson. It is a beautiful caring book about nursing, and achingly sad.
The book I couldn’t finish
I’m afraid it’s Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. I have tried twice and got halfway through both times, absolutely loving it – and then somehow I got bogged down and gave up.
The book that changed my mind
Great Expectations. I’d read a shortened version of Nicholas Nickleby at secondary school and didn’t respond to Charles Dickens at all – but when I read Great Expectations by myself a couple of years later I was blown away by his wisdom, humour and humanity.
The last book that made me laugh
This Is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay. I obviously feel emotional when I read books with a medical theme. I burst out laughing again and again – though parts made me feel tearful, too.
The book I give as a gift
I love to give Where the Wild Things Are to toddlers. I’ve read it aloud to countless small children and they always love it.
The book I’d most like to be remembered for
Hetty Feather, my story about a fierce little Victorian foundling.
My earliest reading memory
When I read my way through all three of Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree stories, and thought them magical.
My comfort reading
All five volumes of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles – an addictive literary family saga that always makes a bad attack of flu bearable.
• Dancing the Charleston by Jacqueline Wilson is published by Random House (£12.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p on all online orders over £15.
