Jane Caro is a journalist, author, social commentator and long-time advertising copywriter. Her first young-adult novel about Elizabeth I, Just a Girl, was published in 2011 and the sequel, Just a Queen is out this month from UQP. She is at next week's Sydney Writers' Festival.
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Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte
I have lost count of the number of times I have read this book. The last time was aloud to my (then) teenage daughters. The first time I read it I was quite young and I was captivated by the fact that Jane was inwardly vehement, passionate and rebellious, yet outwardly small and plain. I identified with that contradiction strongly. I love the grand guignol of Thornfield and the mad Bertha Rochester. I love that Rochester must be tamed and Jane made independent before Bronte allows them to marry. It is time I read it again. As a girl, Jane Eyre gave me hope.
The Second Sex
Simone de Beauvoir
I read this as a young woman, around the same time as I read Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch and Marilyn French's The Women's Room, yet it is de Beauvoir's book that sticks with me. Her concept of women as "the other" has remained with me ever since and continues to explain much to me about why so many men reject women and the feminine side of themselves. I have never forgotten her explanation that we define civilisation by the distance we put between ourselves and our shit.
The God Delusion
Richard Dawkins
For years I had described myself as an agnostic and had even played around with the idea of spirituality. Then I read this powerfully logical book. I became angry and the scales dropped from my eyes. When I finished I stopped pussyfooting around and came out as an atheist. I think we need to leave magical thinking behind and deal with what is. For that clarity and sense of purpose, I thank Dawkins.
True History of the Kelly Gang
Peter Carey
This is my favourite of Carey's books and I read it while I was contemplating writing a series of novels about Elizabeth I. Carey's brilliant use of the first person in this novel, his ability to give us Ned's story in Ned's voice gave me the idea of writing about Elizabeth Tudor in the same way. I did not know if I could pull it off but Carey inspired me to try. I have just published the second novel in the series, Just a Queen, the sequel to Just a Girl, published in 2011.
