Christie Watson is a former nurse who won the 2011 Costa First Novel Award for Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away. Her latest novel is Where Women Are Kings (Other Press, April 2015).
On your nightstand now:
Do No Harm, a nonfiction exploration of brain surgery by Henry Marsh. He has turned human neuroscience into poetry, medicine into art. The mirroring of the complexities of humanity with the intricacies of human anatomy is breathtakingly clever.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Anything I could get me hands on, but I particularly loved Enid Blyton's stories. As a mother myself it delights me now that my daughter loves the same stories I loved, as my mother before me, and her mother before her. Life may be completely different on the surface but literature reminds us that we're not all that different from previous generations after all.
Your top five authors:
Junot Diaz, Toni Morrison, Lorrie Moore, Raymond Carver, Philip Pullman (this is a changeable list).
Book you've faked reading:
I've faked reading too many books to list here. Whilst studying for a Master's degree in Creative Writing I was working as a nurse and had a toddler. So I read the first three chapters and last chapter of most things on the reading list.
Book you're an evangelist for:
A novel called Lamb by Bonnie Nadzam. It's beautifully disturbing.
Book you've bought for the cover:
An early edition of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. It was a gift and I adore the cover. And it smells really good!
Book that changed your life:
In some way, every book I ever read. But the book that changed me most was Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, as a young teenager. It was when I first realized I was, and always would be, a feminist.
Favorite line from a book:
"I am the invisible man." --from Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Which character you most relate to:
Any female character with major flaws. I recently read Mrs Hemingway by Naomi Wood and related to all four major female characters, which is a testament to Wood's writing.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Beloved by Toni Morrison. Though every time I read it I notice something new.