Marika Cobbold / Features / Untitled Books

"We move in time from the 1970s to the near future and in place from the US to Italy and briefly into the lair of a South American dictator. One chapter is told entirely in PowerPoint."

Photograph: © Cato Lein

Marika Cobbold

Marika Cobbold was born in Sweden and is the author of six previous novels, including Guppies for Tea. She now lives in London and is endeavoring to memorise the first page of a certain classic.

Jennifer Egan: A Visit from the Goon Squad

The terms 'experimental writing' and 'music industry' do not immediately sell a book to me but I loved this smart, funny and moving novel. Here the experimental elements work so well you feel there could be no other way to tell that particular story. The narrators change from chapter to chapter. We move in time from the 1970s to the near future and in place from the US to Italy and briefly into the lair of a South American dictator. One chapter is told entirely in PowerPoint. Yet at the heart of the novel are wonderfully recognizable and involving characters, good old-fashioned narrative skill and an understanding and knowledge of the human heart and mind that renders the writing timeless.

Edith Wharton: The Age of Innocence

Like A Visit From the Goon Squad, The Age of Innocence is also a Pulitzer winner. Far removed from Egan's sex, drugs and rock and roll Wharton deals with the genteel and seemingly narrow concerns of a society long gone even at the time of writing. The over-arching theme of The Age of Innocence is that of the conflict between an individual's desire for freedom against his need for social acceptance. I love the way Wharton manages to maintain a strong narrative drive while confining this conflict almost entirely to the internal dialogue of its main protagonist. She is a master too at making a character spring alive with just a couple of perfectly pitched lines.

Tony Judt: Ill Fares the Land

I'm still in the process of reading Ill Fares the Land, but I already agree with the friend who told me it is a must read. Judt, now sadly dead, was an historian in possession of a wonderful mind. I don't always agree with what he says, but it's hard to argue with the view that there is something profoundly wrong with the way we live today, with our materialism, self-interest and warped individualism. Where, he asks, is the sense of shared purpose? And who now asks themselves the questions that used to be at the heart of political thinking: questions like, 'Is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society? A better world?'

August Strindberg: The Red Room

I haven't read this since I was at school but having found it in my mother's bookcase I'm committing the first page to memory. Every writer should. It's perfection.

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Drowning Rose by Marika Cobbold is published by Bloomsbury.

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Thursday, 4 August, 2011