Lottie Mills’ Five Books

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

Angela Carter’s most famous collection was utterly formative for me: I fell in love with her sumptuous, delightfully dark takes on fairytales at University, while I was first beginning to write fairytales of my own.

Chouette by Claire Oshetsky

This is a wonderfully strange contemporary novel following a woman who gives birth to a monstrous owl-human hybrid child. Although at times delightfully, wincingly gruesome, what makes me truly love this book is its surprising heart: it is a powerful love song to difference.

The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson’s most famous story -- with an ending so shocking that it garnered death threats when it was first published in 1948 -- is a masterclass in economy, and a testament to the unique power of the short story form. I love what I call ‘gut punch’ short stories -- and Jackson’s is the original and the best!

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

This was the first ‘adult’ book I read, at the age of nine, and its themes can be seen in my writing to this day. Taking place in a post-nuclear society firmly in the grip of fundamentalist religion, where ‘imperfect’ children are cast out, this is a fascinating and thoroughly underrated dystopia.

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

The central conceit of Ukrainian Ilya Kaminsky’s narrative poetry collection is both simple and devastating: after a young deaf boy is murdered by invading soldiers, the whole town, in protest, collectively turns deaf. Kaminsky’s use of fable and fairytale fascinated me so much that it was the basis of my MPhil dissertation -- and this astonishing little book may be my favourite ever representation of disability.