Books That Changed Me: Natasha Lester

Reading Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem made Natasha Lester realise she wanted to be a writer.

NATASHA LESTER

Natasha Lester's first novel, What Is Left Over, After won the T.A.G. Hungerford Award for fiction. She has published three further novels, If I Should Lose You, A Kiss from Mr Fitzgerald and Her Mother's Secret. Her new novel, The Paris Seamstress, is published by Hachette.

LITTLE WOMEN
Louisa May Alcott

This book meant so much to me that I still have my childhood copy. As a 10-year-old, I wanted to be Amy March with her blonde hair, blue eyes and artistic temperament. When I was writing my first historical novel, which, among other things, is a book about sisters, I kept my battered copy of Little Women on the desk as a kind of talisman and inspiration. I even had my main character, Evie, grow up in Concord, Alcott's hometown.

JANE EYRE
Charlotte Bronte

I stumbled upon this in the library when I was about 12. Children locked in cupboards, madwomen in attics, brides jilted at altars, the tall, dark and ever-so handsome Rochester, and passion with a capital P. This was storytelling. This was love. This was loss. It was a pivotal moment in my unformed writer's brain and probably accounts for my preference for dark-haired heroes.

THE LYMOND CHRONICLES
Dorothy Dunnett

I bought the first in this series, The Game of Kings, from the secondhand book stall at South Melbourne market. It was hard to read, occasionally opaque, and required a working knowledge of French. Despite those obstacles, I was so caught up in the story that I returned to the market every week to look out for the next book in the series. I re-read this series whenever I'm creatively exhausted, finding more richness every time.

SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM
Joan Didion

In 2005, I went back to university to study creative writing. One of the books on the syllabus was this one. I vividly remember reading it and thinking: wow, imagine what it would be like to write the kind of sentences Didion writes, to create prose that was so beautiful I wanted to underline every sentence. I'd enrolled at university thinking I wanted to be a writer; this book made me know that I wanted to be a writer.