'The plot twist is devastating': the book Isabel Haarhaus wishes she'd written

Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits of Aotearoa writers, and guests. This week: author of Feral and Other Stories, Isabel Haarhaus.

The book I wish I'd written

Atonement by Ian McEwan. Each historical setting is vividly detailed and palpable. The plot twist is devastating and a master class in structural cohesion. And Claire Keegan’s Foster – small, quiet and heartbreaking.

The book everyone should read

King Lear because it cautions us to beware of the flatterer, reminds us to put our house in order, and shows us the tragedy of reckless and vain leadership. It’s probably a good time to go back and read any of Shakespeare’s Tragedies – the fatal flaw of hubris is currently on full display.

The book I want to be buried with

Emily Dickinson’s poetry – her succinct philosophical nuggets of delight, insight and alarm could keep me puzzling throughout eternity. Or I’d like to be buried with the books that I read over and over to my children when they were young – Where the Wild Things Are, Goodnight Moon, Hairy Maclary. It would be soothing to take those satisfying stories and rhythms into the afterlife.

The first book I remember reading by myself

De Bruikleners, a Dutch translation of one of Mary Norton’s The Borrowers. Because I have an older brother, I used to pretend to be reading when he was. Then one day the marks on the page came into focus and made sense. It was exhilarating, like when you first ride a bike without someone holding you upright. I also remember being very proud when I first read Margreet Bruijn’s De Zilveren Schaatsen (The Silver Skates) by myself. It’s set where I grew up, near Amsterdam, so every household in our village had a copy of this book.

The book I pretend I've read

Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. I feel like a writer should have read this. I’ve read so many references to it and its theme of involuntary memory, that sometimes I think I have read it; but no, I haven’t read it – yet.

Fiction or non-fiction

Both! I read a lot of art history and monographs, memoirs, essays and reviews, as well as fiction and poetry. I’ve recently read Celia Paul’s Self Portrait and Letters to Gwen John. I love reading about singular creative lives, especially women’s.

The book that made me cry

Charlotte’s Web (every time!), See ya, Simon, and most recently, Crooked Cross by Sally Carson.

The book that made me laugh

Anything by David Sedaris. I came to him relatively late, when a friend – incredulous that I had never read him – lent me several of his books and I spent the summer falling about laughing my head off. It was wonderful, and whenever I need cheering up, I read a few David Sedaris essays.

If I could only read three books for the rest of my life they would be

Tolstoy's Anna Karenina – I’ve read this a few times, and each time at a different stage of life, I identify with a different character and part of the story. Lila by Marilynne Robinson – anything by Robinson is profound, but Lila is my favourite. And the third would be a big book of selected poems from a range of historical periods and cultures.

The book character I identify with the most

So many! Fern in Charlotte’s Web, but also the irascible Olive Kitteridge, and, at her most untamed and viscous, Lila in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. I’d like to identify with Bill Furlong’s steady moral compass and courage in Small Things Like These and with Mary Ferguson’s easy open-mindedness in Carys Davies’ Clear. 

The plot change I would make

In Othello I would have Emilia and Desdemona ditch their stupid jealous husbands and run off together, move to Florence, and take up painting. I would have Jane Eyre read Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea and learn Bertha Mason’s story before she agrees to marry Mr Rochester. And in Colm Tóibín’s Long Island, I would have Eilis insist she and Tony build their family home far away from her in-laws and have her pursue a career in law.

Encounter with an author

In the 1980s you could take Creative Writing as a subject (as well as English) at high school, which I did. At Selwyn College, the Head of English, Bill Lennox, invited Hone Tuwhare to our Creative Writing class. Tuwhare came regularly, and sat with us and read and commented on our poems in a low-key and encouraging way. I don’t think we fully appreciated who he was, but we sensed his mana and learnt to relish the sounds of words and everyday sensory details.

Earlier still, at Ōpōtiki Primary School, our kaiako were mates with Barry Crump. He joined us for some of our school camp in the bush, where we learnt the Māori names and medicinal uses of the plants. Much later, I drank red wine with Anthony Bourdain, Kirsty Gunn and her husband, David Graham, in a bar near St Martin-in-the-Fields in London in 2000. I was Kirsty’s nanny, and David was the MD at Canongate Books. It was a very charismatic afternoon.

Greatest New Zealand book

Janet Frame’s three volumes of autobiography, An Angel at My Table. I read these volumes as a teenager and was struck and transformed by them (including being turned on to NZ fiction). The writing was visceral, terrifyingly honest and at once macabre and hilarious – all very appealing to a teenager. Frame’s experiences were historically remote, idiosyncratic and shocking, yet also weirdly familiar. Patrick White pronounced Frame’s autobiography to be ‘among the wonders of the world’ and I agree.

Best food memory from a book

Pippi Longstocking’s chaotic pancake-making on roller-skates; Amy Wither’s reassuring "pikelets for peace" in Owls do Cry; and the agonising figs in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

What I'm reading right now

Tata by Valérie Perrin – a French novel in translation; No Good by Sophie van Waardenberg – I heard Sophie read at this year’s Ockham Awards and again at Time Out Bookstore on National Poetry Day and am now enjoying her book; and, very slowly, Der Vorlehser (The Reader in German) by Bernard Schlink – I’m trying to grow my reading age in German. I’m also about to pick up Olivia Laing’s The Silver Book from the library.

Feral and Other Stories by Isabel Haarhaus ($35, Otago University Press) is available to purchase from Unity Books.