The best books to turn you into a novelist...they turned me into one

The extraordinary story behind the creation of The Pickwick Papers forms the backbone of my novel, so I must include this among my recommendations. The Pickwick Papers is full of life—loads of characters, many writing styles. There is humour—but there is also the tragic tale of an alcoholic dying clown. And, above all, this book is a journey: you feel that you have been on a long, long voyage when you reach the last page—and you will want to go on that voyage again and again. The Pickwick Papers is more like a library of experience than a single novel. I have never read anything like it. 

Borges writes only short fiction—and his collection of stories Labyrinths made a huge impression on me. The stories have a clean, almost mathematical style, and are often based on a single, bizarre concept. For instance: just suppose there existed a library in which the books represent all the possible combinations of the letters of the alphabet—so some books consist of nonsense, others consist of the complete works of Shakespeare, or even Shakespeare’s works differing by one letter from the original. In my book, I include an inset story about a man called Mr. N, who spends fifteen years of his life cataloguing every word in The Pickwick Papers and this story was strongly influenced by Borges.

This book made me realise that a great novel could be largely plotless. The Tree of Man simply describes the lives of a husband and wife in Australia—a sort of echo of the Garden of Eden set in the Outback. I can’t claim that I remember many details about it now—I read it years and years ago, but I do know that it made me feel that I too could write a plotless book, based on simple, everyday human experiences. 

This book’s magic comes from its plot. I would say it is the most unputdownable book I have ever read. But once again, it deals with a simple human experience—in this case, of a young man obsessed by a woman. There are times when you feel like shouting at the main male character: “Don’t do it! Don’t do it!” And of course he does do it, and you want to find out what happens. I remember that I recommended this novel to a friend, who didn’t believe it could be so unputdownable—but he found himself staying up until the early hours of the morning, unable to stop reading this novel. In a way, I think Of Human Bondage will influence me more as a writer in the future than it has so far—because one day I would like to write a heavily plot-driven novel. 

This novel was a massive influence on me. Rutherfurd takes the city of London as his subject, and follows the life of the city through the centuries, taking in Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Normans etc…right through to modern times. I don't have quite such a huge canvas in my book, but I do follow a series of historical events in a manner which is somewhat reminiscent of Rutherfurd. Rutherfurd takes you on a wonderful journey.