Hattie Crisell's Desert Island Books

Featuring the collection of essays that makes Hattie cry with laughter, and a thought-provoking exploration of the many forms of love...

I first discovered Hattie Crisell and her brilliant podcast In Writing last year. The show features interviews with celebrated novelists, journalists, screenwriters, and poets, delving into how they write, why they write, and what their creative processes can teach us. While I’ve loved every episode, my absolute favourite was the one with Maggie O’Farrell—you can listen to it here.

In November, Hattie released a book based on the podcast—also called In Writing. It’s a beautiful, galvanising ode to the creative (and often mysterious) process of writing. I devoured it in a single sitting on a flight from Singapore to Sydney—it’s that good.

If you'd like to get your hands on a copy of In Writing, please consider buying it from Bookshop.org—a fantastic online marketplace that supports local, independent bookstores. Alternatively, why not become a paid subscriber to my Substack? You’ll be automatically entered into a weekly draw to win a book by one of my Desert Island Books guests, and In Writing might just be winging its way to you soon!

Featuring the collection of essays that makes Hattie cry with laughter, and a thought-provoking exploration of the many forms of love, read on to find out which books Hattie would take with her to the sandy shores of a desert island…

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

In 2008 I went to visit an American friend, Jay, who handed me one of David Sedaris’s books and said ‘I think you would really like this guy.’ I remember reading it on the journey home and crying with laughter. Sedaris is such a brilliant, economical writer with a keen eye on the world; he’s often shining an unforgiving light on hypocrisy, but he also takes such joy in the absurd and the peculiar. I interviewed him for my own book, In Writing: Conversations on Inspiration, Perspiration and Creative Desperation, and I couldn’t believe my luck at having a one-to-one discussion with him about the writing process. I learnt so much.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

I’d like to take a book that reminds me of the luxurious escapism I found in fiction growing up, and Little Women was one of my favourites. The small dramas of it are so delicious: the contraband pickled limes in Amy’s class, and the shame of Meg putting on a fancy dress for the ball (which I never quite understood – poor Meg). I was annoyed that Jo wouldn’t get together with Laurie, but I loved the fact that she was a writer. The March sisters would be good company on my island.

The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown

I spend about half my working life as a journalist, and although it’s an industry with a lot of problems, it can be very, very exciting. There is a thrill to identifying a brilliant story or persuading an elusive person to speak to you. Most of all, it’s an industry full of hot gossip and people who know how to tell it, and that’s the atmosphere captured by Brown’s diaries of her time editing Vanity Fair from 1983 to 1992. It was a more glamorous, affluent era of journalism and it probably did a lot of damage, but it’s great fun to read about.

Collected Poems of Philip Larkin

I think I’d want some poetry with me on my island. I studied Larkin’s collection The Whitsun Weddings as part of A-level English Literature and really fell in love with his writing (though as a person, he was pretty unpleasant). There are still so many poems of his that I’m unfamiliar with, and good poetry by its nature is so layered that it can tolerate an almost infinite amount of interpretation. This collection would keep me busy for a long time, and help me to tap into the most profound stuff of life.

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

Part of the reason why I started talking and writing about creativity is that I’ve found so much comfort and solidarity in other people’s work on these themes. There are many craft books I love, from George Saunders’ A Swim in a Pond in the Rain to Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, but if I were going to a desert island I’d take The Artist’s Way. It holds your hand through self-doubt and self-sabotage, and when you’re stuck, it reminds you of the deep pleasure all humans find in being creative. It would help me make life on a desert island more meaningful.

Any Human Heart by William Boyd

There’s something so powerful about Boyd’s novel covering an entire human life, from childhood to the last days. In our culture, we struggle to grasp mortality and the inevitable passage of life through its many seasons. There’s an aloneness at the end of the book – at the end of the protagonist’s life – that’s incredibly sad to read, but it’s real. Boyd is brave enough to look the existential dread straight in the eye, and I’d probably have to do a bit of that on my island.

Mrs Weber’s Omnibus by Posy Simmonds

I’d need plenty of laughs. I’m tempted to take Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding, but with Simmonds’ comics, I would have something beautiful to look at as well. Mrs Weber’s Omnibus is a bit of a cheat because it’s an enormous compendium of the comic strips she drew for The Guardian in the 1970s and 1980s. They were about a family trying and failing to live up to their own political ideals – Guardian-reading wokerati worrying over the right things to do, basically. Simmonds writes (and draws) hilarious social commentary, and reading them, I would feel like I was out in the world again.

Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn

I found Lunn’s book not only thought-provoking, but nourishing. It explores so many forms of love – romantic, platonic, parental – and even touches on the love for humanity that’s implicit when we treat strangers with warmth or care. Even small human connections can be so sustaining. I think these are the most important topics of our lives, and if I have to be shipwrecked on my own, I’d like to be reminded of the rest of my species, and how we try to love one another.