In this week's What Book, find out which popular 20th-Century American novel leaves James Rebanks cold
Farmer and Author: James Rebanks
What Book...
…are you reading now?
I am reading My Friends by Hisham Matar. This was long listed for the Booker Prize this year. It tells the story of some young Libyans caught up in the events around the Libyan Embassy in 1984, and their lives as political exiles in London afterwards.
My Friends is fiction, but Hisham’s life has revolved around the events of his homeland, as recounted in his wonderful and heartbreaking memoir, The Return. He is one of the great writers of our age – civilised, decent, thoughtful, and kind. Somehow I’m lucky enough to say he is my friend.
…would you take to a desert island?
I’d take The Summer Book by the Finnish writer Tove Jansson. She is famous for creating the Moomins, who used to have their own animated series when I was a child, but she was also a very fine writer.
The book is about the happenings (or non happenings) on a tiny island in the Gulf of Finland one summer long ago. It is gloriously simple and about the important things – what makes us happy and how we navigate the sadness and setbacks in life. It is also a funny book, and I think I’ll need a chuckle or two if I’m far away from my loved ones.
Starting young: James Rebanks got the reading bug from his hero Camus
…first gave you the reading bug?
I loved reading the classic novels of the 1940s to 1960s, because that’s what was on my grandfather’s bookshelves. I read The Plague by Albert Camus, For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, and everything George Or well ever wrote.
Camus was instantly my hero – he had grown up poor in Algeria, loved football, was handsome, had been in the resistance in the war, and had died in a car crash when he was young. It felt like he was talking to me, years after he died, telling me these beautiful stories about what humans were, good and bad.
…left you cold?
The Great Gatsby is weirdly sterile, superficial and empty, and I’ve always been bemused why people rate it so highly. I also hated Of Mice And Men by John Steinbeck because the working men in it felt like they were being patronised and laughed at. Maybe I read it wrong when I was young and had a chip on my shoulder. Maybe I should read both books again.
The Place of Tides by James Rebanks is available now from the Mail Bookshop
