My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
This was the book that made me want to be a writer. When I was 10 years old, a teacher read my class the book – the story of a family of eccentric English toffs who relocate to Corfu between the wars. It was like being struck by lightning – I realized how books could totally immerse you in a world that you have never seen, how the world of the book could be more real to you than the world outside your window. I loved the descriptions of Corfu’s sea, sun and countryside and, of course, identified like crazy with the free-wheeling, animal-loving boy. Part of me still wants to be that boy wandering the dusty sun-soaked backroads of Corfu alone.
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
This is one of the books I re-read every year. Totally original and very bold – it takes some nerve to write a 500-page love story where one of the characters is a time traveller. But time travel was never written like this before. This is time travel is an affliction, a curse, a disease that can’t be conquered and can only be managed. A book with a massive heart and huge intellect.
Double Indemnity by James M. Cain
Nobody did terse, tough guy crime stories quite like James M. Cain - brief, brutal books written in this pared down, sub-Hemingway prose. The best of Cain – Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Ring Twice – are somehow always the same story. A morally-blank man meets a hot, unhappy wife and they decide to bump off her hubby. And then it all goes very wrong.
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
Although the HBO series was set in southern California, I thought Big little Lies was a very Australian novel. It is wonderful on middle-class Aussie life, so much of it revolving around the beach. What I love about Liane Moriarty is that her characters seem familiar – you can imagine meeting them at the school gates or a dinner party – and yet you always believe that absolutely anything could happen to them. Ordinary people stumbling into extraordinary situations. My favourite.
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