My life in books: Sue Rainsford

The arts writer from Dublin has just had her second novel published. Here, she reveals the influences behind her work

Author Sue Rainsford

April 18 2021 02:30 AM

Sue Rainsford studied history of art at Trinity College, Dublin, and works as an arts writer. Follow Me to Ground was her first novel and was longlisted for the Desmond Eliot Prize. Her second, Redder Days, has just been published by Doubleday. She lives in Dublin.

The books on your bedside?
I always have far too many; I try to trick myself into thinking I’m just about to read them by keeping them close to the bed. Right now there are four Doris Lessings, by Heidi James, Helen Franklin’s biography of Shirley Jackson and by Sigrid Undset.

The first book you remember?
by Roald Dahl. Some of the illustrations got under my skin because they were drawn, not from the point of view of Little Billy, but from the perspective of a creaturely presence up in the trees that’s watching him move deeper into the wood. There’s also this refrain in the book, ‘Beware! Beware! The Forest of Sin! None come out, but many go in!’ that still rises up in my mind unbidden.

Your book of the year?
Hari Kunzru’s . t was one of the first books I read this year. To me that book is a truly rare thing: reading it, you know you’re learning about the world you live in — the conditions that are bearing down on your head and heart right now, at this very moment — but it’s still a completely successful piece of art on its own terms.

Your favourite literary character?
That’s a tough one. I don’t know about ‘favourite’ but probably the character I think about the most is Harriet from Donna Tartt’s .

The book that changed your life?
There are a couple of books that I feel changed the course of my life in a very meaty way. The novella by Joyce Carol Oates refreshed my want to be a writer in my early twenties — a time when that desire was very much waning. Later, Eimear McBride’s and Sheila Heti’s showed me the full, aesthetic scope of issues that were very present for me at the time. especially trickled into my view of my own life in a powerful way.

The book you couldn’t finish?
. Every couple of months I read another 20 pages and put it down again: it’s no comment on the book itself rather my expectations of it were so misguided going in.

Your Covid comfort read?
All of Ben Lerner’s novels. I read them in quite speedy succession over the first lockdown; I typically don’t laugh at things that are meant to be funny, but I found those books hilarious — as well as incredibly erudite and moving.

The book you give as a gift?
I rarely give the same book twice but Ágota Kristóf’s and William Maxwell’s have probably landed the best of any book-gifts I’ve ever given. I’m waiting to give Sarah Henstra’s and Jenny Hval’s and Ocean Vuong’s to someone when the time is right.

The writer who shaped you?
Again, there are so many. But I owe a very palpable debt to Bhanu Kapil who writes about the somatic sphere of knowledge in a way that helps me push my own writing forward. Elena Ferrante, too, for how she cuts right to the quick of any given feeling. I love that some of her phrases can be a touch cumbersome on a technical level, but are always so searingly accurate on every other level that counts. I’d love to get close to that at some stage as a writer; a gut-punching accuracy where raw feeling is concerned.

The book you would most like to be remembered for?
That’s a book I haven’t written yet. I feel the shape of it nudging into view every so often, and then it slinks away again. I know it’ll move around trauma and the female body — all the easy, straightforward things.