The novelist on learning empathy from Charles Dickens, the playfulness of Irenosen Okojie and avoiding Jane Austen
My earliest reading memory
I was eight when I was given The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley, after being moved from my grandmother’s care to live with my mother and her husband, who I barely knew. The story is about leaving one world, adapting to another. Surviving. It gave shape to unnamed feelings and developed my survival imagination: imagining beyond my circumstances.
My favourite book growing up
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I followed David’s journey from exclusion to belonging. Dickens vivifies his characters; you grow alongside them. The novel taught me empathy, and that some relationships sustain us while others must be left behind.