Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits of Aotearoa writers, and guests. This week: author of the novel Parrot Heaven, Jessica Howland Kany.
The book I wish I’d written
The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers. I read this book 30 years ago. It was the first novel that truly awed me; I remember wondering if it would be possible for me to ever write a book as beautiful, brilliant, thought-provoking and fascinating. The answer is most likely yeah nah, but it’s a fat shiny star to reach for, and I’m happy knowing books like this exist.
The book everyone should read
The Bat-Poet by Randall Jarrell is a bit niche for everyone-in-the-whole-wide-world, but it’s one of the books I recommend to people the most (close tie with Mytting’s Norwegian Wood). Things are pretty dark these days – like Cormac-McCarthy-dark – so I reckon people could do with something calming. I’ve always found The Bat-Poet to be a truly lovely balm of a book. It’s delightful for kids and adults, it’s sweet but not treacly. It does something difficult: it explains poetry to those that don’t like or understand poetry. It’s a slim volume (less than 50 pages) that can be snacked in an evening and manages to tackle big subjects gently. Non-conformity, creativity, inspiration, hope, art, diplomacy, squirrel behaviour, confidence, the natural world. And if those aren’t all good-enough selling points, it is illustrated by Maurice Sendak whose ink drawings of bats and other animals make this book an absolute gem.
The book I want to be buried with
Cars and Trucks and Things That Go by Richard Scarry. Our copy is so well loved and tape-repaired it looks more like a mummy than a book. My husband and I spent countless hours reading this book to our boys. Tiny wee Goldbug is hidden on each two-page spread and we’d challenge the boys to find him before we did and they always would. We’d sing-song “Goooold-buuuug where aaaaarrre youuuu?” and their little pudgy fingers would poke right at Goldbug wherever he was hiding on the page. For years we had Goldbug slippers, shirts, birthday cakes. The book represents some of the sweetest years for our family life and I have a visceral attachment to it. If there’s the slightest glimmer of hope that there’s an afterlife where we awaken into our favourite memories, this book could be the ticket guiding me to a big comfy chair, my babies and that book in my lap.
I wish I’d never read
Little Bee by Chris Cleave and The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. The rape/violence/murder of girls: gratuitous horror I couldn’t get past to appreciate any of the writing style or the story. Just left me shook and sick. Oh, and Helter Skelter: The true story of the Manson murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry which gave me nightmares for years.
It’s a crime against language to …
If a book mentions food I want specifics beyond breakfast, lunch or dinner. Harriet the spy didn’t just eat lunch, she didn’t just eat a sandwich … she ate a tomato sandwich on white bread with mayo. I find it hard to trust the writer without culinary details. Lars Mytting is an example of a writer who does excellent meal descriptions.
The book that haunts me
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. There were a couple scenes in that book I can’t forget and that brought me a whole new level of sorrow. The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy scared the crap out of me. I read everything he wrote and this along with Stella Maris was so strange and complex I hardly understood most of it, but I got the powerful heebie jeebies from this final book he wrote. It felt like McCarthy had glimpsed or understood something truly terrifying about the universe and our place in it and he was using this book to try to warn us.
The book that made me cry
The Yearling by Marjorie Rawlins is the first book that broke my heart. Rontu’s death in Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins was pretty darn devastating. I read Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver alone at a restaurant and I’m sure I ruined some romantic dates around me because I was ugly crying over my plate. All the trailer park stuff at the start and when he asks his aunty to adopt him, and how the kids at school treat him. So gut-wrenching. And of course Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell just about killed me.
The book that made me laugh
Less and the follow-up Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer are two recent books that made me laugh out loud so much on an airplane I was feeling sharp side-eye from people across the aisle. Also, I can’t ever get through any Winnie the Pooh story featuring Rabbit, Owl or Eeyore without crying with laughter.
The book I never admit I’ve read
Heads by David Osborne. 1980s “medical thriller” horror book I snuck from my aunt and uncle’s bookshelf while I was visiting. Not so much the fact I read it, but that I earmarked certain pages and re-read particular passages. It had to do with the disembodied-yet-living heads having their brains stimulated to have orgasms so they make all these orgasm noises, I would have been seven years old reading this stuff over and over, not quite understanding but understanding enough to know it was naughty. Rather confusing really, because it was probably one of the first things I read about human sexuality and it was wrapped up with punishment, torture, humiliation, and disembodied heads in a secret laboratory.
The book I wish would be adapted for film or TV
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester is my 83-year-old dad’s favourite book and he has said to me at least 500 times that he wishes someone would make it into a movie. So I dream that someday me and my dad have a movie date at Cinema Paradiso in Wānaka, share popcorn and watch Paul Mescal as Gully Foyle on the screen.
I would also love to see my books on screen! They unfolded cinematically in my mind – soundtrack and all – and I reckon they would be awesome as a series. Moody-NZ-small-community-pub-quiz-crime genre, set on Stewart Island and with humour: each season platforms a different literary classic so the audience not only gets a funny mystery series showcasing a beautiful corner of Aotearoa, but they also are inspired to dive into some great literature like Yeats’ poetry, Moby Dick, Shakespeare and The Epic of Gilgamesh.
Most underrated book
A Book Dragon by Donn Kushner. I love a good dragon book and A Book Dragon is so charming and unique and when I read it a few years ago I kept thinking, “Where has this book been all my life?” To be fair it didn’t exist all my life, it was first published in 1987. There is so much to love in A Book Dragon, including a big dose of human history, magic, dragon origin stories, dragon mythology and creed, and the love of books and bookshops. The main character is a terrific dragon named Nonesuch. My edition is illustrated manuscript-style throughout which makes it even more wonderful.
Encounter with an author
In the 1990s when I was writing for The Jackson Hole News I interviewed Jean Craighead George. She wrote My Side of the Mountain which is one of my favourite books of all time. That was such an exciting incredible honour I hardly remember the conversation, just a blur of nerves and babble on my part, but I know I got to tell her how much I loved her book and that’s a big thing.
About 10 years ago I reached out to Susan Brind Morrow, author of one of my favourite books, The Names of Things. I was writing about running and wanted to know how to write “run” in hieroglyphs and she’s a hieroglyphs scholar and wrote back to me with the answer – a little thing, but I was fangirling so hard I was walking on air.
Best food memory from a book
Chapter 72 of Moby Dick is devoted to chowder. Ishmael and Queequeg finding the inn called Try Pots has all the satisfying elements of travel eating: the hard-to-find locally recommended restaurant after a wet cold day, clamshells littering the street out front, the proprietor Mrs Hussey banging in and out of the kitchen door like Grover the waiter. The fishy-tasting milk from the fishing-eating cow struck a note with me – we used to have cod-flavoured eggs from a hen that ate fish-n-chips scraps from the pub!
Parrot Heaven by Jessica Howland Kany ($38) is available to purchase from Unity Books.
