Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits of Aotearoa writers, and guests. This week: Nina Nola, author of memoir The Way To Spell Love.
The book I wish I’d written
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, because this is the first grown-up novel I bought for myself, and it changed the world. I was flying to the former Yugoslavia for the first time at age 11 with my family to meet relatives, and I wanted a book that could protect me on the journey. My copy was a short, fat paperback with a picture of a wispy female on a lonely moor on the cover. I knew there was a world in those pages that could take me somewhere other than where my body was. It worked!
Everyone should read
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens because it is an exquisite exploration into a coming-of-age. Pip the ragged little boy becomes Pip the gentleman and along the way learns where to put his trust and what being a gentleman really means. David Lean’s 1946 film adaptation has one of the most haunting openings you could imagine. Poor little Pip — how much he had to lose to gain himself.
The book I want to be buried with
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. This classic has brought me so much happiness. I loved teaching it. The canvas is so small, the characters so large, the dilemmas so basic. Timeless.
The first book I remember reading by myself
Collier’s Junior Classics: The Young Folks’ Shelf of Books. We had the 10-volume set and our father picked stories for us to read: we’d read them aloud on a Sunday evening and were judged on our performance. My favourite volume was the first, “ABCGo”. The story I loved was “The Wide-Awake Owl” who just could not fall asleep and who felt out on a limb on the tree she shared with other animals who were all great sleepers. I thought of myself as that little owl, unable to relax, on the alert, not quite in place. I put that in my memoir.
The book I wish I’d never read
A book by the French Nouveau Roman writer Alain Robbe-Grillet. I’m not going to name the title. There’s an image I just can’t even begin to recall without repercussions. It makes my spine tingle and my legs turn to jelly just writing the author’s name. It’s a sexual image that made me so cross I can’t bear to write about it.
Fiction or nonfiction
Memoir, hands down. I never get tired of seeing how others frame their lives, their omissions, their obsessions. Mind you, I’ve yet to read a concluding sentence that has left me satisfied. I tend to snap the book shut with a grunt and mutter, “Not another one!” The closest to perfection so far? Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey.
It’s a crime against language to
Mangle punctuation. I’m marking university essays right now and I could weep. There is a reason for these little marks between letters. While we are still agreeing to use them, let’s use them correctly to control movements through our text, over our words. There is nothing more beautiful than well-directed words. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m a stickler!
The book that haunts me
Kirsty Gunn’s The Keepsake is an exquisite read which — night after night — I would put down, pick up, read a little, close the book with a solemn nod to art and to beauty, put it down again, but have to pick it up once more. I wish I hadn’t. You know how you can never unlearn how to ride a bike once you’ve learned? I’ve read Gunn, so I can never unread her. Unique. Dazzling. So, so awful.
The book that made me cry
I am an impassioned reader, and I will often throw a book across the floor if I think it badly written or sloppy. (OK, I’ll toss it carefully, so as not to damage the spine.) As I was finishing Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites I burst into sobs of anguish. It is not just a gripping story set in 1800s Iceland, it’s all true. And the ending is unbearable. I closed it and lay the book over my heart and wept.
The book I never admit I’ve read
The whole series of the Fifty Shades books. All three of them. I may have even carried one onto a bus in a brown paper bag and peeked at it while sitting at the back. Forget the sex. They’re about abuse.
Encounter with an author
When I met Karl Ove Knausgård in a lift at the University of Auckland I was overwhelmed by his presence. I’d recently devoured his five-volume My Struggle series and was saturated in his words. To be going to his masterclass on writing with Paula Morris at the helm was a thrill. “Be prepared to be sued,” he told us about writing a memoir. He wished me luck with mine.
Best place to read
Absolutely anywhere where you can pick up a book — a book, not a kindle or a tablet or a phone — and suddenly find yourself somewhere else. I never go anywhere without a book or two; you never know when you might be able to snatch a few moments of a different world, a place outside of yourself, but in your head. Pure magic. Pure escape.
What I’m reading right now
I heard on RNZ about Yvon Chouinard, the legendary climber, businessman and environmentalist and his company Patagonia and how he recently gave away his billions — so I got his memoir, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman. I was going to give it to my surfing entrepreneur son, but I was so fascinated by the mixture of home-grown ingenuity and chutzpah that I just had to keep reading. It’s not my usual fare, but it is oddly liberating — and I know the ending is a good one! My son will just have to wait.
The Way to Spell Love by Nina Nola ($38, The Cuba Press) is available to purchase by Unity Books.
