Geraldine Brooks is the author of People of the Book, March (winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction) and Year of Wonders, plus the nonfiction works Nine
Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence. Her new novel, Caleb's Crossing (Viking, May 3, 2011; view
the trailer here), is based on a young man from Martha's
Vineyard who, in 1665, became the first Native American to graduate from
Harvard College. Born and raised in Australia, Brooks lives on Martha's Vineyard
with her husband, the author Tony Horwitz, and their two sons.
On your nightstand now:
The Thousand Autumns of Jakob de Zoet by David Mitchell. I am enjoying this--Mitchell has discovered exactly the kind of historical backwater I love--a rich and alien setting, a distant time and place. Yet his characters are familiar to us, their hearts are recognizable. I love his use of what he terms "bygonese" to give a sense of authenticity to antique language.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Scruffy by Paul Gallico. My father was a proofreader, and he was proofing this book as a serial in a women's magazine. He would bring the proofs home and read them to me at bedtime. It's a wonderful novel, set during the dark days of World War Two, when a British solider is charged with keeping alive the last of the apes on Gibraltar, because their fate is linked in myth with that of Britain.
Your top five authors:
Tim Winton, Jane Austen, Marilynne Robinson, Rose Tremaine, Mary Renault. It is hard to stop at five... I could go on... and on....
Book you've faked reading:
The Tree of Man by Patrick White. I was supposed to read it for my final year at high school but I couldn't bear it. At the time I thought White was a pretentious old git. I suppose it's time I tried him again.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Bread of Angels by Stephanie Saldana. I usually make fun of blurbs that call books luminous, but this one really is. It is a mix of gorgeous writing, deep insight and page turning story, by a young American in Syria on a Fulbright just as America goes to war in Iraq and her Damascus neighborhood is flooded with refugees.
Book you've bought for the cover:
The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester. I think it was the Australian edition--wonderful cut-out dust jacket revealing a delicious-looking peach....
Book that changed your life:
A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. It opened my eyes to the natural world, which continues to prove an abundant source of inspiration and reflection to me.
Favorite line from a book:
"By now she knew that this life, despite all its pain, could be lived, that one must travel through it slowly; passing from the sunset to the penetrating odor of the stalks; from the infinite calm of the plain to the singing of a bird lost in the sky; yes, going from the sky to that deep reflection of it that she felt within her own breast, as an alert and living presence." --Andre Makine, Dreams of My Russian Summers; the "she" is a French women, trapped in Siberia by the Russian Revolution. She believes her husband has been killed in the war, and is out picking dill stalks on the steppe. This moment is just before her husband returns to her.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. I wanted to read it again as soon as I finished it.
Book Brahmin: Geraldine Brooks
Geraldine Brooks is the author of People of the Book, March (winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction) and Year of Wonders, plus the nonfiction works Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence. Her new novel, Caleb's Crossing (Viking, May 3, 2011; view the trailer here), is based on a young man from Martha's Vineyard who, in 1665, became the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. Born and raised in Australia, she lives on Martha's Vineyard with her husband, the author Tony Horwitz, and their two sons.
On your nightstand now:
The Thousand Autumns of Jakob de Zoet by David Mitchell. I am enjoying this--Mitchell has discovered exactly the kind of historical backwater I love--a rich and alien setting, a distant time and place. Yet his characters are familiar to us, their hearts are recognizable. I love his use of what he terms "bygonese" to give a sense of authenticity to antique language.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Scruffy by Paul Gallico. My father was a proofreader, and he was proofing this book as a serial in a women's magazine. He would bring the proofs home and read them to me at bedtime. It's a wonderful novel, set during the dark days of World War Two, when a British solider is charged with keeping alive the last of the apes on Gibralter, because their fate is linked in myth with that of Britain.
Your top five authors:
Tim Winton, Jane Austen, Marilynne Robinson, Rose Tremaine, Mary Renault. It is hard to stop at five... I could go on... and on....
Book you've faked reading:
The Tree of Man by Patrick White. I was supposed to read it for my final year at high school but I couldn't bear it. At the time I thought White was a pretentious old git. I suppose it's time I tried him again.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Bread of Angels by Stephanie Saldana. I usually make fun of blurbs that call books luminous, but this one really is. It is a mix of gorgeous writing, deep insight and page turning story, by a young American in Syria on a Fulbright just as America goes to war in Iraq and her Damascus neighborhood is flooded with refugees.
Book you've bought for the cover:
The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester. I think it was the Australian edition--wonderful cut-out dust jacket revealing a delicious-looking peach....
Book that changed your life:
A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. It opened my eyes to the natural world, which continues to prove an abundant source of inspiration and reflection to me.
Favorite line from a book:
"By now she knew that this life, despite all its pain, could be lived, that one must travel through it slowly; passing from the sunset to the penetrating odor of the stalks; from the infinite calm of the plain to the singing of a bird lost in the sky; yes, going from the sky to that deep reflection of it that she felt within her own breast, as an alert and living presence." --Andre Makine, Dreams of My Russian Summers; the "she" is a French women, trapped in Siberia by the Russian Revolution. She believes her husband has been killed in the war, and is out picking dill stalks on the steppe. This moment is just before her husband returns to her.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. I wanted to read it again as soon as I finished it.