Lidija Hilje's Desert Island Books

Featuring a devastating love story, and the book by Ferrante that she never fully recovered from...

Anyone who’s a regular reader of this Substack, or has asked me for a book recommendation in the last few months, will already know how much I adore Slanting Towards the Sea by

Lidija Hilje

. It’s a truly beautiful book and an astonishing debut, set against the backdrop of craggy Croatian cliffs. It tells a story of lost love and second chances, of memory and longing, and the quiet ache of what could have been.

What I loved most was the atmosphere Lidija creates—tender, melancholic, and so richly evocative that I could almost feel the sea spray on my skin and hear the echo of footsteps on old stone streets. Her gift for capturing the emotional undercurrents of a moment—those things left unsaid, the tension in a glance, the weight of the past—is an all the more impressive considering English is her second language.

I want everyone to buy it, to read it, and to be transported to that transformative summer in Croatia—where everything changed for Ivona, the unforgettable protagonist of this gorgeous debut. If you’d like to buy a copy, please consider doing so on Bookshop.org—a better way to shop online, with every purchase supporting local independent bookstores.

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It was such a thrill to have Lidija take part in my Desert Island Books series and to learn more about the stories that have shaped her. I have to say, it’s been one of my very favourites to date. From a devastating love story filled with tension and desire, to the book by Elena Ferrante that left the biggest impact, her selection of eight titles offers a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a writer whose debut I can't wait for people to discover—and whose writing I hope they’ll fall for as completely as I did.

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout

I often pull this book from the shelf at random as I pass by—just to read a paragraph or two, close my eyes, and feel the peaceful comfort of knowing a character so well; of reading something that feels true and familiar, like a second skin. I love Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy Barton series, and this is my favorite among them. Lucy feels like a friend who is whispering the story of her life into your ear over coffee, with quiet honesty and warmth. If I’m alone and stranded on a desert island, this is the kind of a book I would want with me—one that feels like a friend keeping me company.

Euphoria by Lily King

One of the most devastating love stories I’ve ever read, this novel is so full of tension, desire, and emotional complexity that it can keep me engaged no matter how many times I’ve read it. Loosely based on the life of cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead—whose name I still remember from a sociology class I took in law school—this story is a complex intellectual and romantic triangle set against the unforgiving backdrop of the New Guinea jungle. Honestly, compared to that, my desert island might feel almost cozy! The novel’s ending is utterly heartbreaking—I’ve never read a more (quietly) devastating closing paragraph. Even on a desert island, a girl needs to have her heart broken every now and then.

The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante

This was the first book I ever read by Ferrante, and even though I’ve gone on to love some of her other books more, I will never forget the impact this book had on me. At its centre is Olga, a woman suddenly betrayed and abandoned by her husband, and left to care for their two children. Olga’s understandable feelings of grief, fear, jealousy, and anger soon spiral into something darker, obsessive, and even unhinged. Her unravelling was hard to watch but impossible to look away from. I never fully recovered from this book and still think about it often.

Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas

I could never resist a doomed love story filled with longing and this is one of the best. When I finished it, all I wanted to do was flip back to the beginning and start reading again. The yearning left me aching all over. But there was much more brewing under the surface, too: the protagonist’s coming-of-age, her dealing with regrets and resentment; the extraordinary Australian setting brought to life in mesmerising detail. I’ve always been drawn to female protagonists like the unnamed narrator in this story—who feels the world deeply yet turns inward to process life; who is equally precocious and naïve about the world; and who, despite having an old soul, takes everything in with wide, childlike eyes.

Left to Tell by Immaculée Ilibagiza

There was a time in my life when I was struggling with severe anxiety, and as I had done many times before, I turned to books for comfort. Though I usually gravitate toward literary fiction, this wasn’t a time for quiet stories. Instead, I immersed myself in autobiographies, memoirs, and biographies penned by or about people who had survived unimaginable hardship. A man whose plane crashed into the Pacific during WWII, leaving him drifting in a raft for months before falling into enemy hands (Unbroken); a Sudanese woman escaping religious oppression (Infidel); an Austrian girl abducted at eight and held captive until she escaped at eighteen (3096 Days).

Amid my own struggles, these stories offered perspective—and, despite the harrowing details, a surprising sense of hope. If others, especially women, could survive such unthinkable horrors, surely I could endure the much smaller challenges I was facing? If I could bring only one of those books to a desert island, though, it would be Left to Tell by Immaculée Ilibagiza. She survived the Rwandan genocide by hiding in a tiny bathroom with seven other women for three months. And somehow, through unimaginable loss, including the lives of almost her entire family, she not only let go of resentment, but found a way to forgive those who had committed those beastly acts of violence. And then she went on to miraculously manifest the life she had shyly been visualizing in the confines of that small bathroom, where she was waiting the genocide out.

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

This masterpiece follows Larry and Sally Morgan, a married couple who form an unlikely friendship with the more affluent Langs. What unfolds is a lifelong bond that transcends blood and family ties. I discovered this book just as something similar was happening in my own life—my husband and I had formed a sudden, intense connection with another couple. Like us, they had small children, limited familial support, and shared the same hunger to live fully despite limited means—and we quickly became a found family. Stegner’s novel was the first I’d read that captured the powerful, complicated dynamic that can arise between two couples—the joys, tensions, and the delicate balancing of four distinct personalities. Reading it on a desert island, it would prompt me to think about how our own lives might unfold going forward, in case I ever crossed back to safety of the mainland.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

When I was thirteen, and my grandmother was dying, I asked her what her favorite book was. She had recently moved from the island where she was born and had lived since retiring—the same island where my sister and I spent every summer, and where we lived with our grandparents during the years of the Homeland War. My grandfather had died two years earlier, and not long after, my grandmother fell ill. The apartment she’d moved into was small and bleak, and I often visited her before or after school to keep her company and fill her days with something other than thoughts of illness and dying.

My grandma was a voracious reader, there were always heaps of books on her credenzas and nightstand. When I asked her this question, she said her all-time favorite book was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I’m sure I would have forgotten the title, if she hadn’t been rushed to the hospital just days later, never to return home. But that final conversation was still fresh in my mind, and in my grief, I clung to the book’s name, the last thing my grandmother had shared with me, tucking it in the safest of my memory vaults. Over the years, I searched for it in libraries, always coming up empty. Then, just last year, a Croatian publisher released a new edition, and my mother bought me a copy. You’d think I would have dropped everything to read it—but I still haven’t. Maybe it’s fear: what if it doesn’t live up to the mythical hype I’ve built around it? What if I don’t like it, and that disappointment somehow distances me from my grandma’s memory? But perhaps more than anything, I might have avoided reading it because, as long as I don’t, it remains the last thread connecting me to my grandma—one conversation we can still have. If I were stranded on a desert island, though, I would finally crack this book’s spine and open myself to that last conversation. Maybe, somehow, mercifully, it would turn out to be only a beginning, and more conversations between us might follow?