The book I’ve never finished
I hated A Little Life by Hanya Yanigahara so much I threw it in the recycling to take it out of circulation. I like a lurid, kitschy abuse melodrama as much as the next person, but I’ll stick with Flowers in the Attic, which has deadly doughnuts, a better villain and doesn’t demand tearful reverence.

The book that moved me most
Beloved by Toni Morrison. The adapted film is a soul-rending companion piece… the ghost-laying chorus of holy grandmas at the end. And Oprah as Sethe.

The book I’m reading now
I have four on the go: White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, Theodore Zeldin’s The Hidden Pleasures of Life, Rebecca West’s The Fountain Overflows and Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel. I read the last two every year because they’re like amazing panopticons, not only of their particular positions in history and place, but also in a way that reflects your own shifting interiority each time you revisit them.

Author of Blackwood and Naming Monsters, Hannah Eaton talks books with Sussex Life magazine. Read in full.