Literary Birthday - Emma Donoghue, 24 October

Happy Birthday, Emma Donoghue, born 24 October 1969

Donoghue is an Irish-born playwright, literary historian and novelist now living in Canada. Her 2010 novel Room was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize.

Emma Donoghue’s 10 Best Books

1. Alan Garner’s Red Shift is an extraordinary fantasy novel about the same spot in England in Roman, Civil War, and modern times; in my teens this book was a cult for me, and I think it should be rediscovered by all fans of, say, Philip Pullman.
2. Which leads me to Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials — Perhaps the most ambitious ‘“children’s books” (whatever that means) around today.
3. Emily Dickinson’s Collected Works — Because she’s like a Martian, she has a strange and original take on every aspect of life on Earth.
4. Sarah Waters’s Affinity — I read it in one sitting on a long night flight over the Atlantic (perhaps the ideal conditions for any book?) and was completely gripped and spooked out by this ghost/love story set in a Victorian prison.
5. Carol Anshaw’s Aquamarine — A brilliant examination of three ways someone’s life might have gone.
6. Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White — A fantastic, tight Victorian thriller about a stolen identity.
7. Alan Gurganus’s Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All — An extraordinary saga about the Civil War South.
8. Carol Shields’ The Stone Diaries — A deeply satisfying experiment with many different ways of narrating an ordinary life, and it made me weep hysterically on a train, much to my lover’s embarrassment.
9. Jane Austen’s Emma — I can’t prove it’s her best, but it’s the one I’m named after, and I strongly identify with her spoiled, arrogant, likeable heroine.
10. Audrey Niffeneger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife — I’ve only just finished this funny-strange, funny-ha-ha love story, so it’s my latest favourite.

by Amanda Patterson