Fiona Kidman is an award-winning New Zealand writer who has just published her memoir At The End Of Darwin Road (Random House, $34.99).
The book I love most is... I love Canadian writer Alice Munro's Open Secrets as much as any book, although it squeezes its way pastdozens of others shouting "pick me". She is my favourite writer and I think this her most satisfying work. A collection of long short stories, each encompasses several lives and personal dramas, and each has a secret at its heart. Thus, in the title story an old man who has lost his mind is a convenient scapegoat for a murder that would otherwise destroy a community. The uneasy acceptance of the lie reverberates down through the years. Munro uncovers the secrets of what people do and why, with breathtaking skill, leaving in her wake a wave of recognition at how much many of us know but never tell about our families and communities.
The book I'm reading right now is... The Middle Sea by John Julius Norwich. With seemingly effortless style and dazzling prose, Norwich writes about the history of the Mediterranean, the Middle Sea, a story that begins with the Phoenicians and Pharaohs and ends with the Treaty of Versailles. You could say he does for the Mediterranean what Michael King did for New Zealand history, transforming complex facts into a fascinating and seamless read.
The book I'd like to read next is... I'll plump for The New Granta Book of the American Short Story edited by Richard Ford (Granta, $39.99). I like that he's been influenced by Eudora Welty and lived in her street. I read an interview with Welty once in which she said: "As you have seen, I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within." Something I've carried around in my head for a long time. So I'll enjoy re-visiting her, and Raymond Carver and John Cheever, all those familiar short story writers I so admire, and finding some new ones along the way.
