When I was at school, I used to read on my way to the bus stop. I like to think that as a result I have developed excellent peripheral vision, but this claim has never been tested empirically. I was a chain-reader: as soon as I finished one book, I started another. I can remember pacing around the house at bedtime, looking for ‘my book’ (at that time in my reading life, ‘book’ was synonymous with ‘novel’), unable to go to bed until I had found and recovered it from its place next to the washing machine, or on top of the fridge, wherever I had happened to have been when my reading was interrupted.

Living in a country town in the nineteen eighties, before Amazon and Abebooks, Booktopia and The Book Depository, books came from the school library, the municipal library, and very occasionally from a book shop. My grandparents picked up books at secondhand shops, and my parents always made sure that Christmas and birthday gifts included books. I’m so grateful to them, and to the school and municipal librarians who stocked their shelves with good books. I would never have thought to ask for a recommendation, but by luck or fledgling literary snobbery and plenty of highly pleasurable browsing I found the novels that helped shape me.