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| photo: Julia Gravette | |
Katy Hays is the bestselling author of The Cloisters. In addition to writing, Hays works as an adjunct art history professor, teaching rural students from Truckee to Tecopa. She holds an M.A. in Art History from Williams College and pursued her Ph.D. in Art History at UC Berkeley. Her academic writing has been published by Ashgate, an imprint of Routledge. Her new novel, Saltwater (Ballantine Books), is an electrifying thriller about an opulent family and their mysterious assistant whose annual retreat to Italy is shattered by the resurfacing of a decades-old murder.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
The perfect novel to cure your White Lotus hangover; in Saltwater, three women will stop at nothing to escape a family that has everything.
On your nightstand now:
Dominick Dunne's People Like Us. I have a rule that when I'm drafting or actively revising, I'm not allowed to read books published after 2005 because if I do, and the book is really good, I despair that my work in progress will never be as good. So, to circumvent the comparison game (it's bad for everyone involved!), I only read older fiction. Someone, somewhere, mentioned Dunne and I squirreled away the recommendation and have become obsessed. It also scratches my itch for literary gossip: *whispers* he was Joan Didion's brother-in-law!
Favorite book when you were a child:
A tie between The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder and Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper. Both books were published in the late 1960s and I read them in the late 1980s or early '90s, but they were absolutely formative and the first books that taught me what a story could really be, what it was capable of doing. Also, talk about atmosphere!
Your top five authors:
My three north stars are Patricia Highsmith, Daphne du Maurier, and Shirley Jackson, but I'm also a huge fan of contemporary writers Christopher Bollen and Calla Henkel. If I were only allowed to read novels by these five writers for the rest of my life, I think I'd be just fine.
Book you've faked reading:
A Visit from the Goon Squad. I'm a huge, huge fan of The Keep by Jennifer Egan, but it's her only book I've ever read. Every time someone mentions A Visit from the Goon Squad, I nod along like I know what they're talking about, but the truth is, I've never so much as read the first page. Criminal, I know. Especially because I adore The Keep.
Book you're an evangelist for:
I really don't think enough people are reading Christopher Bollen. I'm a broken record--talk to me for three minutes about books, and it's likely I'll try to push a Bollen novel on you before you walk away--but in my opinion, he's the most compelling literary suspense writer working today. My favorite novel of his is The Destroyers, but I also think A Beautiful Crime and Havoc are wonderful. He's the kind of writer to whom I will happily give an extra 100 pages run time just because I want to exist longer in his worlds, and really, isn't that the best endorsement?
Book you've bought for the cover:
I've never bought a book for its cover! But for a long time I avoided Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic because I didn't like the cover. Then I picked it up several years after it came out, loved it, and instantly acquired all her backlist and am now a diehard fan.
Book you hid from your parents:
Anything Baby-Sitters Club! My mom thought those books were trash! What she didn't realize was that a well-rounded reading diet necessarily includes some junk food, too! Justice for the Baby-Sitters!
Book that changed your life:
Victoria Holt's On the Night of the Seventh Moon. I still don't know how I first came across Holt. I think it's possible there was a copy of one of her novels in the free bin at our local thrift when I was younger, but in any case, she found me, and my life was never the same. The queen of gothic romance, Holt's novels were the first "sexy" books I ever read (pretty tame by contemporary romance standards!) and I've been a lifelong reader of romance ever since. (Like I said above: everyone needs a well-rounded literary diet!)
Favorite line from a book:
Not from a book. My favorite line is from a response Shirley Jackson wrote to an angry letter about "The Lottery." "Dear Mrs. White. If you don't like my peaches, don't shake my tree."
Five books you'll never part with:
Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby
Daphne du Maurier's The Scapegoat
Jilly Cooper's Riders
Sarah Waters's The Little Stranger
Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani. I found this novel so shocking, so compulsive that it left me literally breathless. I've since re-read it (it's still shocking!) and find it the perfect psychological thriller. I wish more writers were willing to take extraordinarily dark swings like Slimani does in Chanson Douce (the original French title translates as "lullaby"). What an achievement. If only I could recapture the original horror I felt on the first read!