My earliest reading memory
Reading On the Ning Nang Nong by Spike Milligan, aged five or so, sitting on the floor of the bedroom I shared with my brother – who, in my memory, was sitting on the carpet next to me.My favourite book growing up
I had a collection of fairytales in a big yellow hardback, which I was totally entranced by from around the age of seven to 10. I’ll never forget the feeling of despair on turning the page and discovering that the Little Mermaid had become foam on the surface of the water; it was a very early lesson in the helplessness of the reader in the face of a story’s destiny. In particular, though, I loved a Scottish fairytale called The Black Bull of Norroway, which I think, in many ways, has been under the surface of everything I’ve ever written.The book that changed me as a teenager
Collected Plays by Federico García Lorca, which I studied for GCSE drama and led me to seek out his poetry. It would be impossible for me to think about my adolescent relationship to reading, and my relationship as an adult to language, without Lorca. I remember these lines from City That Does Not Sleep hitting me like a bolt of lightning: “… and the man who rushes out with his / spirit broken will meet on the street corner / the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath / the tender protest of the stars”.The writer who changed my mind
