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Eliza Jane Brazier is an author, screenwriter and journalist. Her debut adult novel, If I Disappear (Berkley, January 26, 2021), is about a true crime fan who turns detective when her favorite podcast host goes missing. Brazier, who writes YA novels under the name Eliza Wass, lives in California, where she is developing If I Disappear for television.
On your nightstand now:
Fleabag: The Scriptures by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. I love reading scripts, and Fleabag has some really good ones. Her musing on the size of her bum hole in Act 1 is unforgettable (perhaps unfortunately!) I am also super-lucky to have many 2021 debuts friends, which means I have their books in the queue. Nekesa Afia's Dead Dead Girls and Lyn Liao Butler's Tiger Mom's Tale are two I've been waiting for!
Favorite book when you were a child:
Tough question! First of all, define child because I'm sure I acted like one yesterday. Second, like most authors, I read so many books and loved them all. I'm a huge animal lover so anything with animals was my jam. Off the top of my head, Bonnie Bryant's the Saddle Club series. I worked at a horse stable from the age of eight (child labor laws do not apply when there are horses), but whenever I wasn't at the stables, I was reading about people at the stables.
Your top five authors:
Michelle McNamara for making me believe there are good people in the darkest places. Gillian Flynn for her perfect precision. Megan Abbott for her wild ambition. Donna Tartt for making me laugh. And Louise O'Neill for inspiring me to speak in my own voice.
Book you've faked reading:
Um, excuse you, but I will read anything you put in front of me. Free pamphlets, textbooks, even the Bible. Anything is fair game.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Louise O'Neill's Only Ever Yours. It's about women who are raised for the pleasure of men and it's set in an alternate universe. Allegedly.
Book you've bought for the cover:
So many! Off the top of my head, Chloe Benjamin's The Immortalists and Tara Conklin's The Last Romantics, which basically have the same cover. I confused them for each other.
Book you hid from your parents:
Fan fiction. One that I should also hide from you is that I read Snowqueen IceDragon's Master of the Universe, which later became Fifty Shades of Grey. I like to read anything that is popular because it can teach you so much about the world.
Book that changed your life:
Cecily Von Ziegesar's Gossip Girl. In the first book, Serena Van Der Woodson is dumped by all of her friends. The same thing happened to me in middle school (although I'm pretty sure it was *not* because they were jealous of me--sorry, Mom!) So, Serena goes to a party by herself and ends up having the most magical time with a bunch of strangers. It was a revelation to me and led to a life of befriending strangers. I legit used to tell people my name was Serena. It's an example of how books can infiltrate your identity and empower you.
Favorite line from a book:
"The best of all possible worlds"
Okay, so, it's technically not the invention of the author of the book wherein I encountered it (Voltaire's Candide), but it has definitely stayed with me because it's infinitely relevant. The phrase was coined by Gottfried Leibniz as part of a theory that purported that God is good and God created the world, therefore this is the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire didn't agree.
Five books you'll never part with:
I've moved around a lot so these are books I've bought multiple times. Gillian Flynn's Sharp Objects. Every single line and character and scenario in that book says something about what it means to be a woman in the world. It's a perfectly calibrated story. Donna Tartt's The Secret History. The section where they all go to Bunny's funeral offers this frightening accurate depiction of the humor and mundanity in tragedy. Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle. Spoiler alert, no one gets what they want--except the reader. Megan Abbott's Dare Me is the definition of wildly ambitious. Abbott managed to write a book about cheerleaders as an Epic Tragedy and it absolutely works. Louise O'Neill's Only Ever Yours. Louise allows this obsessive, constant comparison to infiltrate the first-person narrative in an unsettlingly accurate depiction of the mind of a teenager. (And an adult, if you spend too much time on social media!)
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
So many! I love the ones that make you think you wrote them. Where the author disappears and you see yourself on the page, living in this carefully reconstructed world where even pain is beautiful and everything is meaningful.
Your desert island book:
Anything by Donald Trump. I'll need to start a fire.