Madeleine Dunnigan

Madeleine Dunnigan is a writer and screenwriter from London. She was a Jill Davis Fellow on the MFA at New York University. While there she was awarded a GRI Fellowship in Paris.

Dunnigan's new novel is Jean.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:

That They May Face the Rising Sun by John McGahern

I'm ashamed to say I had read none of McGahern's work until I picked up his final novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun. Set in County Leitrim, Ireland, it tells the story of Joe and Kate Ruttledge who have moved from busy London to this rural idyll, giving up their literary lives in order to run a farm. This novel unfurls with slow, quiet precision; days are measured by the change in seasons; lives are rituals of repetition; relationships demarcated by patterns of conversation. It has some of the most beautiful descriptions of nature I have ever read, it is also extremely funny. Nothing happens and everything happens: birth, death, love, change.

Such Fine Boys by Patrick Modiano

I am a huge fan of all of Modiano's works. Most are set in post-Occupation steeped Paris and present themselves like detective novels, yet refuse to resolve the central mystery. Such Fine Boys is set in and around Valvert, a boarding school just outside of Paris, and shares many themes with Modiano's other works. Characters seem tethered to the world by frail strings, often these snap and they float away. Shady figures loom at the periphery; people disappear; others go mad. The novel is structured around vignettes that tell the stories of the school's pupils. At the novel's centre the school remains a halcyon place; a memory of a better time when the boys were safe and protected from the strange and hostile world.

From the Fifteenth District by Mavis Gallant

I adore Mavis Gallant's short stories. There is something so expansive about them. In one story the reader can travel decades; and yet her iron-fisted hold on the narrative retains an emotional tension that sustains to the very end. This collection of short stories is set in a faded post-war Europe with figures who are all slightly disaffected and separate from society. We meet a hotelier on the French Riviera, an English family waiting for a father to die, a Jewish refugee who makes a living playing German soldiers in films. Rich, lustrous and textured, each story feels like a novel in itself.

The Killer Question by Janice Hallett

Every year for Christmas my sister buys me a new Janice Hallett novel. This is my holiday treat. I have always loved detective fiction of any kind, and Janice Hallett's innovative books – written not in straightforward prose but presented as a 'dossier' of text messages, emails, posters and signs, clues which the reader herself can piece together – are such fun. This year's novel, The Killer Question, is a murder set around a pub quiz team in rural England. It's juicy and silly and sinister, all in one!

Visit Madeleine Dunnigan's website.

My Book, The Movie: Jean.

The Page 69 Test: Jean.

--Marshal Zeringue