The author on being emotionally battered by EB White’s children’s classic, comforted by Annie Proulx and falling in love with Middlemarch on her third attempt

My earliest reading memory
I’ve never really recovered from the emotional battering meted out by EB White’s Charlotte’s Web. Yes, of course the death of Charlotte was horribly sad, but far worse in my opinion was the moment when, during Wilbur the Pig’s hour of greatest need, the girl who owned him decided she’d rather go on the ferris wheel with Henry Fussy. She had a pig of her very own and she preferred the company of a boy? I was beside myself with rage and disbelief.

My favourite book growing up
Waking at dawn on a camping holiday in Wales, rain pattering on the canvas, I reached for my still-sleeping sister’s book. My Family and Other Animals grabbed me in a bear hug from the very first line; I read it all that day, even when walking across the thistles to the terrible loos. I was 10, I loved books that made me laugh, and it gave me a template for perfectly formed comedy as well as a dream world of sunlight and freedom.