Each month, the BRAG reaches out to an artist we love and asks them to talk books. This month, we chatted to Alice Bishop. Bishop is a writer whose current work focuses on women’s stories set during the aftermath of Black Saturday. Her Manuscript, A Constant Hum, was shortlisted in the 2018 Penguin Random House Literary Prize. She was also recognised in the 2017 Horne Essay Prize, via Aesop and The Saturday Paper. You can find her latest essay ‘Coppering’ in the current winter edition of Meanjin. She tweets at @BishopAlice.
What is the most prized book that you own?
Can I have two? I probably can’t choose b/w Patti Smith’s Just Kids and Bill Hayes’s Insomniac City. Both books have given me hope, and a way to see the world. Also, both just happen to be set in New York City. I was lucky to see Patti perform at the Hamer Hall in April last year and her grace, passion and grit: it’s everything. In her music, and writing, Patti Smith shows how to take notice. How to live fully but respectfully. I love her.
What was the first book that you bought?
A book from the Saddle Club series. I was one of those cliché horse-obsessed girls, with my bedroom walls plastered with horse pictures, ripped out from magazines. I’m not one of those writers who always knew they always wanted to write (and still sometimes have my doubts!); when I was 12 I was considering a career as an Olympic dressage rider: but that never quite worked out. I don’t think I had enough family wealth, a Pony Club Mum or, to be honest, the talent. I had a good horse though—a calm chestnut quarter horse called Clyde.
What’s the last book that made you cry?
Fiona Wright’s Small Acts Of Disappearance made me actually sob (not even being hyperbolic). I ended up writing a little about how much the book—an elegant, subtle account of her difficult eating disorder—affected me. You can read more in my latest essay ‘Coppering’—out now in the latest winter issue of Meanjin. This line in Nayyirah Waheed’s Nejma also made me (almost) cry: ‘Some words build houses in your throat. And they live there, content and on fire.’
What’s the book you fell in love with when you were a teenager?
We studied Richard Ford’s Rock Springs and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 in high school. Both books really changed me. Richard Ford’s pared-back, powerful writing about everyday things still haunts me – in the best way. Kurt Vonnegut showed me that a writer can be playful with structure and humour, but also be incredibly profound. Mum also had a big collection of Toni Morrison books. Reading Paradise and Love: both books were so important to me.
What books do you have on your bedside table?
I keep a stack, always. At the moment it’s Warsan Shire’s Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, Robbie Arnott’s Flames, Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women and Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s We Should All be Feminists. My partner also recently gave me Decolonising the Mind by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, which is at the top of the pile too. There’s also Pulse Points by Jennifer Down and another Patti Smith gem, Woolgathering. Also Staying by Jessie Cole.
If you were trapped on a desert island, what’s the one book that you would want to have with you?
Probably some kind of survival how-to – as I’ve come in to my 30s I’m finding a new love of learning practical things anyway (!) I actually have the health and patience to really sit with non-fiction now.
What’s the last book that you hated?
Hate is too strong of word maybe, but I recently bought Sam Shepard’s book The One Inside from Doncaster Readings and, though I loved the start, something about the female characters didn’t really sit right. I’ll probably go back and give it a second chance though; it might have just been my frame of mind at the time.
What’s a book people might be surprised to learn that you love?
Probably my Ottolenghi cookbook. Although I am a pretty ordinary cook I like to bookmark recipes and pretend that one day I’ll be the type to whip up some mashed purple sweet potatoes, or some Mont Blanc tarts.
Who’s the writer that changed your life?
I picked up a copy of Josephine Rowe’s Tarcutta Wake, years ago, during the aftermath of a pretty rough relationship break up. Her work is like nothing else – and makes you see the beauty in disrepair and small, every day things. I also read her latest book A Loving, Faithful Animal without wanting it to ever end. Durga Chew Bose’s collection of essays Too Much and Not the Mood also opened up my world.
Read another edition of The Bookshelf here with Pink Mountain On Locust Island author Jamie Marina Lau.
