Before I started writing novels, I wrote readers’ guides to books by women. It was an amazing experience, and I could happily fill the entire internet with favorite authors, but here are five who have strongly influenced my own writing.
Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman
Alice Hoffman is a master at using a bit of magic to help us see life from a different perspective. She’s a weaver of lyrical sentences, with a quick touch when it comes to character that still somehow always sinks deep. “Blackbird House” is a series of stories tracing the owners of one particular and eccentric house over the decades. Each one is a jewel.
The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet
In 1927, M. Wylie Blanchet’s husband died, leaving her with five children on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest. Her family urged her to come home; instead she raised her children on her own, and during the summers took them on their twenty-five-foot boat through the wild waters of British Columbia.
Her writing is beautiful, her courage and adventures are awe-inspiring. She was a major inspiration for “The Scent Keeper” and introduced me to the Broughton Archipelago, where Emmeline’s island is set.
Beloved by Toni Morrison
I remember reading “Beloved” when it first came out. It felt as if someone had blown the barn doors off the written word. Style was substance in Morrison’s work, so intimately connected that it could never be separated—the impact of slavery, the agony of a mother’s decision, vibrating even in the choice of a comma. Morrison taught me that syntax could be just as important as plot in creating a fictional world.
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
I love fairy tales for grown-ups—they teach us about imagination and offer us insights into reality. “The Snow Child” gives us a lonely woman in a lonely place, longing for a child who may or may not be completely real. It is that rare book that manages to capture the rigors of a harsh, rural life in Alaska, the beauty of the impossible, and the reasons why we sometimes need to believe in both to survive.
A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman
Diane Ackerman’s writing is like the love child of science and poetry. Her work is intensely researched, wide-ranging in its sources and fascinating in its facts. But then she presents all that information in some of the most gorgeous sentences imaginable. In “A Natural History of the Senses” she takes each physical sense and does a deep dive into its intricacies, made lush with metaphor. I re-read it every time I start a new project, to remind me to use my senses.
