i just finished "to build a home" and it was so beautiful i'm in awe. it's so delicately and carefully written. i really enjoyed it and i'm glad to see the AN at the end that you took something from the process yourself. aside from the compliment on your writing, i also wanted to ask you if you had a reading list? you referenced a lot of works in your fanfic and i was wondering if you had a list spare. i never got to do english at uni but want to make right on it. no worries if not! thank you
hello (this reply is gonna be manic asf apologies in advance) thank you so so much !!!!! im so glad you liked it hahahaha i really loved writing it and it came to mean so much to me <3 you’re so kind !!!!!
YES honestly you’ve asked me the ideal question here hahahaha i adore yammering about literature to anyone who’ll listen!! okay hmm some of the texts that were most formative for me while i wrote to build a home were
- the house in paris by elizabeth bowen (1935): really good, really fascinating stuff on the nature of memory and time particularly in relation to narrative voice. loads of stuff about houses and buildings in it, generally just really thoughtfully written. really good child characters which i think often authors can mess up but the kids in this book are really convincing and empathetically portrayed.
- cloudstreet by tim winton (1991): SO interesting. a really cool exploration of working class life in australia, familial bonds and the complexity of family, community and kinship. sad, often, a little bit of magical realism, and again some really cool stuff on houses and particularly houses as having memories
- beloved by toni morrison (1987): in general just one of the best books ever written. i am unable to stop singing morrison’s praises and i really don’t want to hahahah. she was the greatest writer of this century imo and this book is so raw and harrowing. comes with a big trigger warning for a lot of things so i’d read around it before diving in, but it’s an exploration of the immediate legacy of slavery, its psychological and physical repercussions in the years immediately following its abolition, but also with much broader implications for its heritage in the modern day. it’s such an incredible book. again, it looks at houses and memory and narrative.
- persuasion by jane austen (1817): this one is so good. it’s basically my comfort book, i adore it. big lost lover reunion vibes, lovers to enemies to friends to lovers vibes. so beautiful.
- grief is the thing with feathers by max porter (2015): very short, extremely poetical look at grief and loss at its most raw and complex. i cried a LOT while reading this one. it’s messy, visually, this scrawled book with inky images and type. it’s so good, so cathartic. i have this morbid fascination with it which i think you’re meant to have, because we all have this morbid fascination with death even as we’re revolted by it. yeah. couldn’t recommend this one enough.
- nox, by anne carson (2010): a really really messy text about the death of carson’s brother. it’s this book you have to literally unpack from its box, you have to unfold and untangle the pages and it’s really unmanageable (like grief). the box it comes in is like a tombstone, it’s big and heavy and grey. this one is really expensive though so if you want to read other stuff about grief by anne carson i would say read her translation of sophocles’ antigone. i wept. so much. it’s such a good, thorny translation. if you’re interested in greek tragedy in general, i would recommend the translations of anne carson or robert fagles. and theatre of war do really great productions of the plays, particularly looking at their implications in the modern day.
- king lear by billy shakes. just as a play exploring fatherhood and forgiveness and obligation and grief it’s so good. it’s my favourite shakespeare play. you can get it online, and there was a really good film of it out recently with anthony hopkins and florence pugh
some other literature that i love:
- the swan book by alexis wright (2013): i truly cannot and could not fault it. a flawless book. tangled knots of sentences, an incredible exploration of landscape and trauma, the mapping of sorrow, within a particularly environmentalist and indigenous context.
- giovannis room and go tell it on the mountain by james baldwin
- a thousand splendid suns by khaled hosseini (2007): brilliant brilliant book
fuck this list is getting obnoxiously long sorry okay:
- any play by tennessee williams - any essay by audre lorde - any poem by r s thomas - any other book by toni morrison
if u want more recs please drop me a message any time !! i love giving em