The writer's bookshelf: Sian Norris

Eight questions about writers, books, and reading…

My favourite conversations are almost always about books. I love hearing about what people are reading, what they read when they were young, how their reading tastes have or haven’t changed, and so on. Who doesn’t, on visiting someone’s house, spend a few moments surreptitiously scanning the shelves – looking for familiar faces, points of connection, frissons of surprise or horror, a sense of someone’s inner life?

Hence this series of quick Q&As. It’s intended as a bit of fun, to be taken as lightly or as seriously as the respondent wishes. Is there an element of nosiness? Yes. Of course. But I do think that books are among the most magical, intimate and vital of societal connective tissues, bringing reader and writer together – soul to soul, heart to heart, mind to mind – across continents, across centuries, across every kind of distance. So I do hope that the different answers people give will spark conversations, provoke argument, give delight, prompt further reading – all the different points of connection and engagement that books can inspire!

Huge thanks to Sian for taking part.

What was your favourite book as a child?

I loved The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. It’s a 1946 novel about a young girl called Maria Merryweather, who goes to live with her eccentric uncle in what is essentially Cornwall. It’s completely magical. In the mysterious manor of Moonacre that is her new home, Maria finds a dog called Wrolf who is really a lion, as well as Zachariah the cat and Serena the hare. The characters, such as Marmaduke Scarlet the cook, stay with you for life. The plot is quite silly really, not very memorable, but this is a book that is all about character and detail and description, and one that makes you fall in love with salmon pink geraniums (one should never argue about something as stupid as a colour!).

What book has had the biggest influence on either your thinking or your writing?

I read a lot of feminist and women’s literature when I was a teenager. My mum’s friends lived in this big women’s house and they had dozens of Women’s Press and Virago books on their shelves, and they really gave me free rein to read what I wanted. I used to sit for hours combing through these novels and borrowing them. I read about women’s oppression in Algeria, factory workers in China, anti-war protesters and hippies in 1960s/70s Boston, just a whole jumble of books – Colette, Atwood, Woolf, Sibilla Aleramo, all sorts. So perhaps it is not fair to say one book because I think it was having access to all these feminist books, many of which I have never seen since and many of which I can’t even remember the titles of, but all combined they really influenced me as a feminist writer and reader.

Do you have a literary guilty pleasure?

I don’t really believe in guilty pleasures because I think everyone should be encouraged to read whatever they want and to enjoy it! If you love 19th century Russian literature or 1990s chick lit or 1970s science fiction, then go for it, no type of reading should come with guilt. But in the way this phrase is understood… I guess people might be surprised that I read quite as many crime novels as I do. I really enjoy getting a novel by someone like Lisa Jewell or Claire Douglas from Asda on a Saturday and then not leaving my sofa until the book is done. Preferably with multiple pots of tea on the go.

Do you turn first to fiction or non-fiction for pleasure?

Always fiction. I just love reading novels. I read so many novels. I should probably read more non-fiction.

What writer or books do you most go back to?

I enjoy revisiting 19th century novels and I re-read Jane Eyre a lot. There’s something about the darkness and the horror, the ways in which Jane influences her surroundings, the way she takes control of her journey, as well as the joy of immersing myself in Bronte’s prose. Also Wuthering Heights. Despite its length I think I have read Middlemarch four times by now, I really enjoy losing myself in the worlds Eliot and the Brontes create for the reader. All of life is in Middlemarch, isn’t it? They are all such impressive world-building novels.

The novel I have read the most, I think, is The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. I don’t care that I know the twist, I still cry and cry and cry at the end. The way she plots that novel is masterful, and I love the detail she puts into it re the clothes and the settings.

What writer or book have you most changed your mind about?

When I was 22 I read Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, and I didn’t understand it. I didn’t get it at all. But in the back of my mind was a voice that said: you don’t get it now. But one day, you will. So when I turned 30, I picked it up and tried again. And yes, aged 30 I got it. Some writers you change your mind about because your life has changed. You read with your life experience and a 22 year old me did not have the life experience to love Lessing!

What was the last great book you read?

Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver. I thought the way she brings the reader into Dellarobia’s internal world was stunning. I lived that novel as I read it! But you know, she’s so good!

What’s at the top of your to-be-read pile?

Consider Yourself Kissed by Jessica Stanley. It’s had great reviews, looks very funny and smart. From what I’ve read about it though, to be honest, as a political journalist, I am probably the husband in this novel.

Sian is a writer, journalist and investigative reporter whose work primarily focuses on women’s reproductive rights and male violence against women and girls – topics on which she has reported on from Bangladesh, Kenya, and Romania, as well as from Ukraine since the Russian invasion. She currently works at openDemocracy and has written for the Guardian, New Statesman and The Times, among many other titles. She is the author of Bodies Under Siege: How the Far-Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global, published by Verso in 2023.