Confessions Of A Book Traveller with Kate Atkinson

We’ve been asking our bookish friends near and far for their reflection on years of literature based travel. Here’s Kate Atkinson’s:

1. Which book character would you most like to live with?
Nobody too excitable, like Cathy from Wuthering Heights. I think I’d go for two – Ratty and Mole from Wind in the Willows.

2. Which book setting would you most like to travel to (real or fictional)?
That’s a tricky one. I’ll probably immediately think of somewhere else but perhaps the Italy of A Room with a View. Or accompany Moll Flanders (very underrated book in my opinion) on her journey through life.

3. Which book ending do you wish you could change and how?
Middlemarch – I think Dorothea Brooke should have married Lydgate not Ladislaw. Failing that, I would never, never have killed off Ginger in Black Beauty.

4. What’s your favourite book by a non-western author?
Hm, good question. I don’t read nearly enough outside of the western canon. I think Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. It retains its power.

5. Where is your reading spot?
My bed, before sleep. Or any train, plane or car.

6. What is your all-time favourite book?
Oo, difficult. I don’t think I have one, but if really forced to choose it would probably be Persuasion. Or Troubles, by JG Farrell. Although if it were a desert island situation, I’d probably choose poetry – Donne or Keats – because it would last longer.