Jennifer Robson has always been obsessed with history.
Her sixth and latest,Our Darkest Night,hits shelves Tuesday.
Just the idea that I could choose any book, it was crazy to me.
Credit: Natalie Brown/Tangerine Photo; William Morrow Paperbacks
Like any book, anywhere in the shop, within reason.
I would give anything to have that book again.
It made everything so interesting.
Grace Draven.com
A book I read in secret
I remember getting in trouble for staying up late readingJudy Blumebooks.
I would smuggle a flashlight into my room.What gave me away was because I was laughing so hard.
It could have beenAre You There God?
Grace Draven.com
The book I enjoyed most in school
The Great Gatsby.
That’s the first one that I voluntarily re-read.
I don’t care if it’s like swallowing a bag full of bran.
Dover
Just choke it down."
At first it was just how beautiful the writing was.
I had it pretty memorized by the end.
Penguin Books
It made me want to write about the Great War; it crystallized my ambition.
For the record, I will never come close to what Pat Barker does.
If I was ever in the room with her, I’m sure I would embarrass myself.
But that book hit me so hard.
The book that cemented me as a writer
It probably was that trilogy.
Paul Fussell’sThe Great War in Modern Memorygot me thinking.
Lewis it’s calledThe Screwtape Letters.
It’s not a hero with a capital H, just an ordinary person.
And I think that’s all we should really aspire to, that ordinary decency and goodness.
A classic I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never read
There’s so many.
We all have the bookshelf of shame.
A book people would be surprised to learn I love
I love high fantasy.
But I’m picky about it.
It’s the world-building I find so fascinating.
I can’t just fly off and invent things.
But there’s an American writer called Grace Draven who writes these incredible books in this alternate universe.
It’s a little bit vaguely Tolkien-esque, vaguely, slightly medieval European.
The catch is that they’re from two different species.
They fall in love despite everything, but the heroine and the hero are so appealing.
Less the vampire stuff, which is fun and [Deborah Harkness] does it really really well.
It’s the premise that a book can be lost inside the Bodleian Library.
That’s so brilliant.
The first historical fiction novel I ever read
The first one?
That’s lost in the mists of time.
But the book that I read and re-read and re-read it again isThe Girl With the Pearl Earring.
For me, that’s the touchstone of imaginative re-creation.
We can’t know who the girl was, but it’s so compelling.
Writing historical fiction, we’re actively recreating the past.
There’s this notion of everything having to be authentic and true.
And it changes depending on who’s telling the story.
But you’re trying to ask, “Is it plausible?”
Not just, “Is it possible?”
but, “Is it plausible?
Does it make sense?
Is it convincing?”
That’s when you know you’ve done something right.
That’s what [Tracy] Chevalier did.
My favorite literary love story
Benedict and Beatrice inMuch Ado About Nothing.
There’s just something about it because she gives up nothing of herself.
She is no way diminished, in the end, by her love for him.
I’ve always wanted to name a pet for them.
Her dialogue, her absolute mastery of the British lexicon of swear words, it’s incredible.
Her books too, there’s a depth to them.
They stay with you, and the characters are very, very well-rounded.
She’s a poet, and it’s a memoir about loss and the loss of her husband.
My literary hero
Charlotte the spider [fromCharlotte’s Web].
She’s a wonderful friend and a good writer.
you’ve got the option to’t aspire to more than that.
The whole vampire thing, I’m not super-interested.
I don’t find that terribly compelling as a genre.
What I find interesting about Matthew Clairmont is how long he’s been alive.
Just like run through the whole thing with me."
I am such a Deb Perelman superfan that I refer to her to my friends as “Deb.”
It’s so mortifying, one of my friends actually thought I knew her.
I had to say, “I’m sorry, Deb is only my friend in my imagination.”
But I also think she is arguably the best food writer working today.
My favorite movie or TV adaptation of a novel
Have long do we have to talk aboutBridgerton?
I almost had to lie down and recover from the experience.
In a good way.
It’s one that I fully have taken to heart.
Our notion of the Regency is a historical reconstruction anyways.
What are we whining about when we talk about historical accuracy?
I had not expected to see what I saw, and I was blown away.
