One of my current writing projects is a childhood memoir, so my bedside table is littered with its fair share of books on that subject. Paul Auster’s Winter Journal has provided some good inspiration. While the book as a whole is an attempt to recount most of his life from infancy to the beginning of old age (all the space of 240 pages), it was the parts about his New Jersey childhood in the 1950s and 60s that I found the most engaging. When Auster gets it right, he does a great job of evoking the vibrancy, the tentativeness, the world-within-the-world dimension of childhood that makes it such a mystery and a wonder. The book is written in the ‘you’ voice, which can get a bit grating, but it does suit the existential hero mode you’d expect from Auster’s French influences. He has copped some flak from the critics for self-aggrandisement, which is reasonable given some of his indulgences; in one preening moment he compares himself to Keats. Caught up in the passion of inspiration, this might have seemed a good idea at the time, but his editor should have told him ‘easy tiger, we all know you’re great, but it might be better if you let someone else say it.’

I teach creative writing, and last week I had the pleasure of rereading Marguerite Duras’ The Lover in preparation for a seminar I had to give. An autobiographical novel set in French Indochina around the 1930s, this book is about the end of childhood and beginning of adulthood. The main rite of passage is the young Duras’ first sexual relationship. I’ve taught this book for years and never tire of reading it. Student reactions are always interesting. Most love it, but some find it showy and melodramatic. But look, I say to the sceptics, look at how she uses images to represent the development of sexuality. She does it through the girl’s outfit: the cherry-red lipstick, the gold lamé shoes, the first silk dress, threadbare, but still silk. And the man’s hat, that final twist to make sure the world is taking notice. Look at Duras’ technique and marvel, I tell them. It’s one of the great essays on how we become what we become, on how we fashion ourselves into who we are.