A stunning emerging Australian writer, Stephanie Bishop's first novel was The Singing, for which she was named one of the SYDNEY MORNING HERALD's Best Young Australian Novelists. The Singing was also highly commended for the Kathleen Mitchell Award.
Her latest novel, The Other Side of the World, is a story of melancholy beauty that proves the only thing harder than losing home is trying to find it again.
Bishop shares her top five most influential books with us ...
John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat by Jenny Wagner and Ron Brooks
I'm sure my mother read me this story as a moral tale – I was the elder sister who had to make room for a new sibling. The book tells the story of a dog, John Brown and his owner, Rose. One night a cat arrives and meows to be let in. But John Brown doesn’t want the cat around and is worried that his place will be usurped. He tells the cat to go away, but eventually must capitulate, in order to make Rose happy. I felt for poor John Brown, he was the first character I really connected with.
The Waves by Virginia Woolf
I read this book as a teenager without really understanding it, but feeling as though I had stumbled on a secret language, and that the book was somehow meant for me. The novel charts the lives of six friends as they move from childhood through to death. I wasn't so interested in the story, but rather in how it was told. I didn't know you could write a novel as if it were a poem – that a novel could be as mysterious and dense and as troubling as a poem. This seemed a revelation.
The Phenomenology of Perception by Merleau-Ponty
This is a really dense, but life changing work of philosophy. I was introduced to it by the late Australian poet Martin Harrison and it truly did change the way I saw the world. The underlying idea is that knowledge is something felt - that it emerges from the life of the body. The book invites you to interrogate the experience of sensation: the feeling of colour, of time, of space. I remember Martin discussing this book in relation to the films of Tarkovsky, and I don't think I've ever recovered from the beauty and mind-blowing force of that seminar.
Swimming Home by Deborah Levy
This is an absolutely wonderful novel about a group of friends who go on holiday to France and in this idyllic place some terrible things happen. At the heart of the novel is the slightly crazed figure of Kitty Finch, who appears out of nowhere to disturb the holidaymakers. Kitty is an aspiring poet who takes to roaming naked through the house and brings about some dark changes. It is an exquisitely written book that cuts to the heart. There's no messing around, and nothing is wasted. The book is dramatic, moving and bizarre. I admire it hugely.
Outline by Rachel Cusk
Outline is an incredible novel that really challenges what we think a novel can and should be. The book exists almost as a chorus of voices, as the narrator - a writer visiting Athens in order to teach a writing course - absorbs and relays the stories of those she encounters. The narrator herself remains something of a mystery: she is the sum of others. The book does away with so much of the paraphernalia we often assume to be essential to a novel. It is a hugely exciting and liberating book to read for this reason.
