My Life in Books

I was born on Anaïs Nin’s birthday. A couple of decades later I would compulsively buy and read (and blush at) all her novels and diaries, but my first literary love was much more innocent: Madeline. 

As an only child, books were my best friends. I adored all the usual girl-heroines: Jo from Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Alice in Wonderland, Pippi Longstocking, Fern from Charlotte’s Web, Elizabeth Bennet …

But I was also fascinated by Asterix, collecting every single comic album, in English then in French once I began studying that language as a teenager, and falling for anything and everything French.

Especially Paris. My parents and I travelled there fairly frequently, and we’d visit Shakespeare and Company, then would walk by the bouquinistes – the historic Seine-side booksellers – where I’d buy dusty, pretty-covered copies of Colette, Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo … This is how I discovered Bonjour Tristesse, a glamorously world-weary read that I still marvel at, especially as Françoise Sagan was only eighteen when she wrote it.

When I was almost that age, I studied Jane Eyre, and became so obsessed that I read it at least five times in that final year of school. I still have my old copy complete with multi-coloured highlights and marginalia. (Yes, I’m someone who annotates and dog-ears; my love of a book is also often measured by the number of post-it notes fluttering from it.)

I once heard that you’re either a Jane or a Cathy girl and that sets the tone for everything – books, life – to come. I did read Wuthering Heights, though, and Anne Brontë too, loving the genre as a whole – so much so that I studied Gothic Fiction as part of my university degree. To this day, curling up and slipping into a book set in a crumbling castle in the wintry countryside remains a particular kind of happiness.

It was while I was at university that my career plans to become a political journalist went awry; I discovered fashion. I would scour every flea market and antique shop not only for vintage dresses but also for books on the subject. My library of fashion reads is now both a brilliant resource for me and a source of joy.

I didn’t end up in newspapers either, being led astray by the glossy lure of magazines. When I worked in women’s magazines, I read all the it-books: Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Secret History, Eat, Pray, Love … (and yes, I was that cliché of a woman who went to Bali, too, and met Ketut while there.)

I’d moved from Melbourne to Sydney for work, which meant I lived close to my maternal grandmother. She was a voracious reader, and we’d often spend weekends togethers, talking about the latest Philippa Gregory (her literary idol) over wine and cheese. It’s one of my favourite memories and every new Philippa Gregory still takes me to a happy place. Speaking of happy places, I was still regularly visiting Paris, often for work, interviewing hair and fragrance experts. (That reminds me: I’ll forever be in awe of Patrick Süskind’s Perfume for the knee-weakening way he writes about smells.) And I found myself collecting books about Paris, or set in that city.

 So, when I had the chance to take some time off work and attempt to write a book, it wasn’t difficult to work out what to write about. Paris Dreaming: What the City of Light Taught Me About Life, Love & Lipstick was published in 2017.

 It wasn’t until 2020 that I considered fiction. Not that it was an especially serious affair to start with. We were in the depths of the first covid lockdown and, after a day of overseeing home-school, I’d take myself to my study and just write, seeing where my words would take me. I ended up in 1950s Paris. There was no plan – I was certainly not a plotter back then. It was, I think, my way of keeping sane during the pandemic. When I realised what I’d written might have the potential to be a book, I redrafted to get some order into the then-180,000-word sprawl. And then redrafted several times more. And a few more after that. In the end, it all got too overwhelming, and I decided to pop the manuscript in a drawer and start afresh.

 As I was mulling over new ideas, I dusted off an old fashion memoir – Always in Vogue by Edna Woolman Chase. The book was a rabbit hole I happily tumbled into, taking me to the wonderland in which I wrote my debut novel, The Parisian Corset.

I’m currently working on what I hope to be Book Two, so much of my reading is for research. (And yes, once again it’s set in Paris.) But I resurface to modern times every now and then, and read books like Yesteryear to see what all the buzz is about. One of the best things, for me, about reading so-called it-books is that so many other people are on the same page. It’s an instant conversation-starter. And if you can’t be reading, you might as well be talking about reading, right?

 I’ve been for lucky to get to know a wonderful group of authors of late, and we occasionally meet to talk words over cocktails. When we caught up for Christmas drinks, our Kris Kringle was themed around our favourite books. My Secret Santa gift was The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford. This is my desert-island book. I could happily read it over and over – and, in fact, I have. Along with every other Nancy Mitford novel and biography. She is an absolute delight to read, because her joy shimmers through her pages. Nancy was one of those determinedly upbeat types, committed to the pursuit of living life well. She once said, ‘If one can’t be happy, one must be amused’, which I wholly endorse. Because surely books are the best source of amusement life has to offer.

Illustration: Clémentine Campardou (first published in Paris Dreaming: What the City of Light Taught Me about Life, Love & Lipstick)