My earliest reading memory
Dad would read Winnie-the-Pooh to me, doing all the voices. He did a particularly excellent Rabbit.
My favourite book growing up
I was 11 when I found A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley in my new school library. Published in 1939, it tells the story of Penelope, a dreamer who can move between the centuries, becoming enfolded in a plot to save Mary, Queen of Scots. To a girl in 90s south-west London, Uttley made it seem absolutely plausible that if I opened my mind enough, I might pass through the barriers of the present and live among ghosts.
The book that changed me as a teenager
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I would have been about 13. God, what a wild, weird story it is – and most of it went over my head. I distinctly remember the chill of Mrs Danvers, and it felt like the first proper grown-up book I’d read. It taught me how people can be strange and secretive. It felt sophisticated but uneasy, like so much of Du Maurier’s work.
The writer who changed my mind
I often struggled with biography, but Claire Tomalin’s Mrs Jordan’s Profession, about the Georgian-era actor, Dora Jordan, was a revelation to me. Tomalin conjured this woman’s life and times – and what a life – so vividly and generously. I went on to devour her dissections and reassemblings of Charles Dickens, Samuel Pepys and Katherine Mansfield, but ultimately, I think her portrait of Jane Austen is my favourite. Tomalin really achieves a resurrection, to get to the human beyond the bonnet.
The book that made me want to be a writer
Most of Roald Dahl’s books made me want to write. He made it seem easy, to a child, and very fun. Matilda, Charlie, Fantastic Mr Fox, Danny – the stories he wrote for them felt more real to me than life. To believe that about stories is the writer’s curse.
The book I came back to
Rachel Cusk. In my late 30s, when I was wondering whether I would become a mother, I tried and failed to read A Life’s Work. It seemed rather terrifying, but that was actually the critique around it, rather than the work itself. Once I was a mother, I read it in the dark in the small hours, feeding my son. It’s the best, most truthful, helpful and loving book about the madness and wonder of early motherhood I have ever read.
The book I reread
Siri Hustvedt’s What I Loved. This is such a beautiful novel, about family, art, love, loss, grief, damage and renewal. It was given to me when I was 25, as a gift after a performance of a play I was in, and has remained special to me over the years.
The book I could never read again
My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley. An exceptional book, written by someone able to peel back the superficial layers of human behaviour and show the truth beneath. Her precision, her understanding of how pathetic so many of our interactions are was so raw, I felt like I’d been flayed alive by the final page.
The book I discovered later in life
Saturday Lunch with the Brownings, a short story collection by the unmatchable Penelope Mortimer. Sharp, deft, embracing of the darkness and violence in us all, she skewered with such economy the hypocrisies of her age, its misogyny and chauvinism, the claustrophobic options left to women, and the corrosion of the female mind when given nothing to do.
The book I am currently reading
Amy Key’s Arrangements in Blue, a unique, intimate memoir about building a beautiful life without prioritising romantic love, or focusing on received ideas of success.
My comfort read
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. The voice of a master: her detail, her humour, the beauty, the love of language. This book is talismanic to me, and it inspired me to keep going with the drafts of my debut, The Miniaturist. When I am anxious or sad, I reach for it. Not just because it’s a good story, but because it is a piece of work so palpably suffused with love, dedication and self-knowledge. I owe Hilary Mantel a great debt.
• Medusa by Jessie Burton is published by Bloomsbury. To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
