Elizabeth Day's Desert Island Books
Featuring a book whose protagonist Elizabeth says is one of the great fictional heroines, and the quintessential New York novel...
This week’s guest on my Desert Island Books series is the wonderful Elizabeth Day. Podcast host, broadcaster, author and now a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she’s long been a writer I’ve admired, and I’m thrilled to share with you the eight books she’d take with her to the sandy shores of a desert island.
I’ve read—and loved—all of her books, but How to Fail remains my favourite. Covering everything from relationships and careers, to friendships and families, Day writes both openly and eloquently about her own failures, and how they have shaped her for the better. Full of inspiring anecdotes and advice, and Day's signature wit and warmth, it’s a must-read for absolutely everyone, and one of the most affirming books I've ever read. And if you’d like to get your hands on a signed copy of it, consider becoming a paid subscriber to my Substack. Each week, you’ll be automatically entered into a draw to win a book by the guest from my Desert Island Books series.
The Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante
Eleana Ferrante writes with such blazing intelligence and indignation about what it means to be a woman that this quartet was, for me, a revelation. The four novels, which start with My Brilliant Friend, chart the course of a best friendship between two women Lina and Lenu, who grow up in the patriarchal confines of 1950s Naples. The details of their entwined life are minutely observed and rendered: from a shared childhood in an impoverished neighbourhood, through to adulthood with its passionate love affairs, burgeoning careers and complex family struggles. The intensity of the friendship is played out against a backdrop of crime and political corruption. Ferrante’s point is that the personal can never really be separated from the political.
Platonic female intimacy is not often explored in great novels, but Ferrante took the archetype of classic literature and applied it to this overlooked area of human experience. Her writing lies beyond stereotypical notions of what it is to be a ‘male’ or ‘female’ writer. It just is. And it’s brilliant because of it.