The author on the trouble with the Brönte novels, what she gained from reading John Updike and Martin Amis – and the brilliance of Barbara Pym

My earliest reading memory
Swallowdale by Arthur Ransome, aged seven. I didn’t learn to read in the first years of school and became entrenched in illiteracy until my grandmother, a retired primary school teacher, intervened. I loved the Swallows and Amazons series, and especially Swallowdale in which a shipwreck is redeemed and the adults provide exactly the right support when the children mess up.

My favourite book growing up
The Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose politics I now find obviously objectionable. I often tell students that what you don’t get is what gets you, and I’m sure the obsession with rugged independence and the repression of foundational violence did me no good, but I liked the landscapes and the combination of domesticity and adventure.