Emma Healey: Five Short Books that informed Sweat

All these books are under 200 pages, and all had an influence on Sweat, my latest novel (which I’d originally hoped would also be under 200 pages).

Mrs Caliban by Rachel Ingalls. The humdrum humiliation of being a housewife taken-for-granted by a philandering husband, is swamped by new romantic feelings for an escaped anthropomorphic sea monster. Poignant and funny, this strange book is about the life-changing joy of being chosen by someone (or something) extraordinary. 

A Painted Field by Robin Robertson. I love this collection, but I read and re-read the poem ‘The Flaying of Marsyas’ while I was writing Sweat, absorbing the visceral description, but also inspired by the tone-piercing dialogue from the ‘butcher’ and his idiomatic apprentices.

Bear by Marian Engel. A book about reading, but also about loneliness and adventure. Librarian Lou visits a remote house to catalogue a collection of books. There, she finds a bear who she befriends and then believes to be her lover. Not, the author stressed, an allegorical book. But with an apparent threat from vulnerable sexual encounters with an enormous aggressive mammal, it’s hard not to imagine a metaphor for abusive relationships.

Up at the Villa by William Somerset Maugham. An out-of-character recklessness changes the course of a woman’s life. When the routinely respectable Mary invites a beautiful but poor violinist to her luxurious house on a hill, her marriage plans are put in jeopardy – especially after she’s forced to beg for help from the dishonourable but seductive Rowley. The dialogue is very witty and much of the plot happens through conversation between the principal characters. 

Come Closer by Sara Gran. Is this book about demonic possession or a woman’s descent into madness? It’s a hard question to answer even after reading it several times. The story is worth the revisit, though. As architect Amanda accumulates clues to explain strange incidents and phenomena, readers have to decide what they’re prepared to believe – and are the increasingly horrifying behaviours explained or obscured by the ending?

Emma Healey