Lynne Tillman's Reading List

"Profound and devastating."

"Virginia Woolf, whose mind and writing overwhelm everything else, comes to help me."

"From Colm Toibin's "The Magician," about Thomas Mann's complicated relationship to his six unusual children, and his behavior when the Nazis took over."

"Joseph Roth's "The Radetzky March" and "The Emperor's Tomb," pre-World War I and post-World War I novels. In the former, Roth presents three generations… in the Austrian Army, and through them narrates the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire."

"Her writing is unadorned, straightforward, almost brutal in its honesty. An Atul Gawande essay on aging alerted me to issues I knew nothing about, and probably encouraged me, subliminally, to write "Mothercare.""

"Elevate Jane Bowles's "Two Serious Ladies"! … "Two Serious Ladies" came out in 1943. Bowles was a born postmodernist. It was her only novel, and for that she's not taught. Her stories are brilliant also."

"I'd add more Edith Wharton — "The Mother's Recompense." Wharton was a beautiful writer, tough, daring."