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Sophie White is a novelist, essayist, and podcaster from Ireland and holds a degree in sculpture from the National College of Art and Design. Her first four books--Recipes for a Nervous Breakdown, Filter This, Unfiltered, and The Snag List--have all been bestsellers and award nominees. Her memoir, Corpsing, was shortlisted for an Irish Book Award and the Michel Déon Prize for nonfiction. Where I End (Erewhon Books, September 24, 2024) is a modern gothic horror novel in which a young woman falls into a dark obsession after a new artist and her baby arrive on her small Irish island. It won the Shirley Jackson Award for best novel.
Handsell readers your book:
Where I End is the batshit love child of We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so if messed-up families, creepy houses, and bad dinner parties are your thing... dive in!
On your nightstand now:
Right now I am reading The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell. It's a layered and vivid family drama about the Bird family who live in a rambling, seemingly idyllic house in the Cotswolds in England. But all is not well with the matriarch, Lorelei, and as Jewell takes us deeper into the troubled heart of this family, things get grimmer and grimmer.
Favorite book when you were a child:
I devoured the Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine--that guy is a legend.
Your top five authors:
Stephen King, Meg Wolitzer, Celeste Ng, Maggie O'Farrell, Marian Keyes.
Book you've faked reading:
I faked reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown! Mainly because there was a period of time when you couldn't MOVE for people asking if you'd read it! The world went cuckoo for this book. I remember sitting on a train and counting 12 people in the one carriage reading it. Anyway, in 2003 if you said that you hadn't read it, people would start nagging at you saying "you HAVE to read it," which I hate--feels like being given homework--so I just started saying I had.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Possession by A.S. Byatt. Possession is one of my all-time favourite books. I have reread it three or four times, and every time I stand in awe of what Byatt made. It's practically four books in one: it's a contemporary mystery, a Victorian love story, and a "collected works" of two very different poets. It follows two young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets. As they trawl through old letters, journals, and poems, a fascinating examination of passion and obsession emerges. An absolute banger.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. The cover is in the style of Japanese artist Hokusai, and it is so epic. Then of course the book is one of my favourites of the last five years. It follows Sam and Sadie from the time they meet as kids and bond over their shared love of video games to adulthood when their friendship must weather fame and betrayal and tragedy. The rich world Zevin has rendered is addictive--not unlike the worlds of the video games that so much of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is preoccupied with. If you, like me, never got into video games, do not be put off. I adored the insights and found a new appreciation of an art form I am totally ignorant of. Also, Sam and Sadie are now my favourite (platonic) literary couple of all time!
Book you hid from your parents:
Probably The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. Not because they were Catholic or anything like that but because I always remember my mum really sternly telling me that I was NEVER EVER to do a ouija board. I naturally went on to kind of do one. Yes, you can "kind of" do a ouija board!
Book that changed your life:
I think it was Carrie by Stephen King. I loved books when I was a kid but it wasn't until first year of secondary school that I got ahold of this book and felt my world opening wider. Not only was Carrie utterly compelling and frightening, it's also a really accessible read and the perfect gateway drug to King's formidable back catalogue. I was obsessed with the book's structure--it's a sort of meta-narrative that uses newspaper clippings, letters, and excerpts from other books to tell Carrie's story of being a teenage girl coming into her (supernatural) powers and exacting revenge on her sadistic classmates and mother. I think a good indicator of how much you love a book is if you can remember where you were when you read it. The books I'm reading always colour my days. When I think of reading Carrie, not only is the book vivid but so is my 13-year-old self reading it. I remember what it felt like skulking in the stacks of the new "grown up" library at my new "grown up" school and feeling as lost as Carrie, though thankfully not as homicidal!
Favorite line from a book:
There are so many quotable lines from Andy Weir's books but I particularly love this from The Martian:
"He's stuck out there. He thinks he's totally alone and that we all gave up on him. What kind of effect does that have on a man's psychology?" He turned back to Venkat. "I wonder what he's thinking right now."
LOG ENTRY: SOL 61 How come Aquaman can control whales? They're mammals! Makes no sense."
Five books you'll never part with:
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
Possession by A.S. Byatt
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Shining by Stephen King
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
I'd love to read Great Circle again by Maggie Shipstead. I just loved the vastness of this story, and it is just so well told. It's a long book, and I never wanted it to end.
Do you believe in reading every book to the end whether you're enjoying it or not?
For years I used to force myself to finish every book I started, but then it occurred to me that there is a finite amount of books in every lifetime. For the average reader like me, I may only ever manage to cram in about four and a half thousand books. With that realisation, I promptly started abandoning books that weren't doing it for me. It's very liberating; I highly recommend. I usually give the book 100 pages before I'll call it. Then it's on to the next one!