Daisy Johnson's Reading List

"This is the first book I remember reading that felt like a punch, a shocked wonder. It’s a thriller set in Copenhagen in the winter about a small boy who dies and the woman who tries to find out how. For a while I reread this book every other year, gave it to everyone I know, carried it around with me for inspiration. It’s savage and freezing and intensely beautiful and strange. It taught me to love writing about strong women and extremes of nature."

"This is one of the books I had on my desk throughout writing Everything Under. It helped me a lot with structure—it’s a novel split into two threads—and it is also a really glorious read. It begins with a woman standing over a dead sheep and wondering what killed it. Evie Wyld writes about isolation and the terror of guilt like no one else."

"Everything Oyeyemi writes is bursting with cleverness and creepiness and strangeness. White is for Witching is set in a big house on the white cliffs of Dover and is about the woman who the house loves a bit too much. It is one of the best reworkings of a haunted house I’ve ever read. My favourite writers to read while I’m writing are the ones who teach us that writing, really, can do anything. I needed this bravery while writing Everything Under , and White is for Witching gave it to me in spades."

"I’m a Halloween baby so being scared is in my blood, and Stephen King is the first person I ever read who really, really frightened me. The Shining is about a small family who go to stay in a hotel over the winter as caretakers. If you think you know the story because you’ve seen the film then you’d be wrong. This book is an absolute classic and a great way into the vast King oeuvre."

"I came late to Anne Enright and wish I’d found her earlier. Again the structure of The Forgotten Waltz really helped me in realising that Everything Under could be structured in whatever way it needed to be. It’s a book about an affair and the repercussions. A relatively simple story done to devastating effect. The Bone People by Keri Hulme is a book I stole from my parent’s bookcase when I was a teenager and devoured. It is not an easy read. It challenges both thematically and structurally, it’s a dark read about abuse and loneliness, tangled up with Maori myth. The best things I have read this month are The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker and Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss. The Silence of the Girls is a retelling of the Iliad and is entirely devastating. In a different way, in fact, so is Ghost Wall which is a beautifully thin novel about abuse and Brexit. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter I’m currently working my way through the rest of the Booker shortlist which is a joyous experience. On my bedside table are the two books I haven’t read yet, The Milkman by Anna Burns and The Overstory by Richard Powers. I’m also reading contemporary horror novels for my most recent project, in the pile are Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi and The Upstairs Room by Kate Murray-Browne. I’m also reading—and as I do rereading—Fiona Benson’s new poetry collection which is astounding."