Cara Bride asked Janet Fitch:

What is your very favorite book of all time? Favorite author?

Janet Fitch Hi Cara! I just saw this... sorry it's taken. me so long. My fondness for various books changes over time and mood... Developmentally, I started with Poe and the sad horse stories of Marguerite Henry, classics like Sword in the Stone... then found Doestoyevsky, crime and Punishment. My favorite for many years, later supplanted by The Brothers Karamazov. Anais Nin's diaries affected me deeply as a young person--a woman speaking honestly, and poetically, about her own life. Faulkner--The Sound and the Fury. Joyce Carol Oates' short stories. Joan Didion's Play it As it Lays. Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano. Marguerite Duras' The Lover. Graham Greene--the Quiet American, the Power and the Glory, The Comedians. John Le Carre, The Perfect Spy. I think if there was any work that I wish I'd written it would be the Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell--if I have to limit it to the book, I'd say the first one of the Quartet, Justine. It's moving, lyrical, intense, and creates an unforgettable world.

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