Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits of Aotearoa writers, and guests. This week: co-director of Verb Wellington, Gabrielle Vincent.
The book I wish I’d written
The Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay. I read this book many years ago, but its eeriness was so powerful that it still gives me chills just thinking about it. The ability to write a book that lodges so firmly in a reader’s memory, and can still provoke a physical reaction years later, is humbling.
I also desperately wish I wrote Stuck by Oliver Jeffers. The premise of this story is simple; a little boy gets his kite stuck in a tree and starts to throw a wild collection of items up the tree to try and knock the kite down. From the family cat to a ladder to the house next door and even a fire truck and fight fighters. It is incredibly comical and gets more absurd as the book goes on, yet I feel like it perfectly sums up kid-logic right the way to the end.
The book everyone should read
James by Percival Everett. his book is an incredible retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain but told from the perspective of Jim, a runaway slave who heads down the Mississippi river with Huck.
It’s funny, sharp, unsettling and often horrifying, weaving adventure with a clear-eyed look at America’s history of slavery and racism. Everett takes a novel that generations have been taught to revere and completely reframes it. As soon as I had finished, I wanted to read it all over again and absorb all it had to say.
The book I want to be buried with
Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi. Wherever I go next, at least I’ll be cooking great feasts.
The first book I remember reading by myself
Say Cheese and Die! by RL Stine. I would sneakily read this book in the school library as there was a ban on RL Stine at home as my mum was concerned I would get nightmares.
Utopia or dystopia
Dystopia – for the drama.
It’s a crime against language to …
To break the rhyming in a children’s picture book. Nothing pulls me out of a kids book faster than a rhyme that suddenly disappears, or one that only works if you read it in a specific accent.
The book that haunts me
The Midnight Table by Bora Chung. There is a story where a character is trapped in an endless motorway tunnel and the exit cannot be found. It starts off being only a few kilometres to the exit and then it extends and extends. I imagine this almost every time I travel through the Waterview Tunnel.
The book that made me cry
A Guide to Rocks by Sacha Cotter and Josh Morgan. I dare you to read it and not be crying at the end.
The book that made me laugh
Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly. This novel warmed my heart and made me laugh the whole way through. The specifics to Auckland life really got me.
The book I never admit I’ve read
Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married by Marian Keyes. I did love it though, and would read again.
The book I wish would be adapted for film or TV
I would love to see Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton made into a film.
Best food memory from a book
When the children in The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton are first given a toffee shock. This delectable toffee begins to grow bigger and bigger until it can’t grow anymore. Then, it suddenly pops! and the children’s mouths are filled with delicious, gooey caramel.
The Greatest New Zealand writer
Margaret Mahy. Her ability to write for such a huge age range of children was phenomenal, and she had a remarkable gift for taking simple ideas and turning them into something extraordinary. One of my favourite books of hers is The Boy That Was Followed Home. Each day, a boy walks home from school and is followed by more and more hippopotami until his father must call a witch to cast a spell to repel the hippos.
My daughter recently had a Magic Faraway Tree party and so I had a go at making the toffee shocks with toffee and popping candy. I got cutting feedback from the seven-year-old guests who were disappointed the toffee didn’t grow and explode. Maybe this is a recipe for Heston Blumenthal to tackle.
Best place to read
At a campground, settled into a fold-out chair with a drink in the cupholder and nothing to plan except the next meal or when to have a swim.
What I’m reading right now
John of John by Douglas Stuart.
Gabrielle Vincent is the co-director of Verb Readers & Writers Festival on in Wellington this week, September 23 – 27.
