Faith Hogan lives in Mayo with her husband, four children and two very fussy cats. An award-winning, best-selling author of six contemporary novels, she has also worked as a fashion model and in the intellectual disability and mental health sector. Faith ’s new novel The Ladies Midnight Swimming Club is published by Head of Zeus.

The books on your bedside?

My bedside table is quite neat, but beneath it, there’s a shelf with current reading – I try to keep it to less than four at a time. So, there is the actual current read, Matt Haig’s Midnight Library, which I’m enjoying very much. Then there’s The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra, and Howdunnit – a compilation of essays by members of the Detection Club, compiled by Martin Edwards. And of course, there’s my Kindle – mainly filled with advance reading copies, but that’s a whole other bookcase in itself.

The first book you remember?

I grew up in a house where books and stories were always present. So, I remember eagerly awaiting my weekly copy of Twinkle. Later, like most kids, I graduated to Enid Blyton. I came late in life to Roald Dahl – this was at a time when all of our books came from the local bookshop and we were very much at the reading behest of their buyer.

These days, I can pop into my local bookshop and they’ll have anything I can name waiting for me within a day or two – good times indeed.

Your book of the year?

This year I’ve managed to make time for writers who had been on my reading list for too long. One of these is Mick Herron. He’s been recommended to me so often, but this year I managed to pick up his Slough House series – I’m absolutely addicted now.

Your favourite literary character?

I think it’s a tie between Gloria Hatter from Kate Atkinson’s One Good Turn and of course Cassandra Mortmain from Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle – that first line gets me every time.

The book that changed your life?

I think every book you read informs you one way or another, but one that is definitively life-changing is quite a different thing entirely. I remember reading Ivanhoe as a teenager and while I wouldn’t say it changed me exactly, it opened up a much deeper love of reading than perhaps anything I’d read before. I did fall in love with everything about it for a very, very long time.

The book you couldn’t finish?

Oh, there have been a few…

 

Your Covid comfort read?

It has definitely been a year when uplifting reads have been really important. Rachel Joyce’s Miss Benson’s Beetle probably came out tops for me – it’s pure escapism, and beautifully written of course.

The book you give as a present?

The best gift you can give is to make a person smile. My copy of Read Me and Laugh, chosen by Gaby Morgan, is probably the most dipped into book in our house. The poems are riotously funny and often thoughtful.

The writer who shaped you?

I have shelves of books on writing craft, some by brilliant novelists, screen writers and publishing insiders. But the writers who shaped me most are those who lured me into reading, so from the start Enid Blyton, progressing to James Herriot and Arthur Conan Doyle who kept the love alive and later, writers like Rosamunde Pilcher and Anne Tyler who make me want to write every book even better than the last.

The book you would most like to be remembered for?

I’m not sure I’ve written it, but I will admit I’m very proud of The Ladies Midnight Swimming Club – readers have been saying the nicest things about it.