BOOKS THAT CHANGED ME
Blanche d'Alpuget is the author of a dozen books including the biography of her husband, former prime minister Bob Hawke, the award-winning novel Turtle Beach and the essay On Longing. Her new novel The Lion Rampant is the second in her series on the rise of the 12th-century Plantagenet rulers of England.
The Jungle Book
Rudyard Kipling
I read this aged 10 and identified with the boy, Mogli. It instilled a love of animals, jungles and adventure. In the early 80s I travelled upriver to the interior of Kalimantan to an orangutan sanctuary. Encountering them was poignantly tender. Babies clung around my neck, older ones bent down from trees, inviting me to join them on a branch. I've swum with wild dolphins and travelled to distant beaches to see giant sea turtles lay eggs.
The Feminine Mystique
Betty Friedan
This was the single most empowering book I've read, opening my eyes to the misogynysexism in which word culture was and is steeped. (The Female Eunuch and many others came later.) Mystique showed me sexism's many subtleties; it made me a conscious feminist. These days I'm sometimes horrified when young women trash the respect and legal rights that my generation fought to secure.
Monkey Grip
Helen Garner
I read this when I had just begun to write fiction myself and was blown away by Helen's command of the medium. Never before had I read a writer with such punch-you-on-the-nose honesty combined with refinement of feeling and precise use of language. Helen is for me the living goddess of Australian letters. Personally, I find her adorable, although we've spent very little time together.
The Bible
I read this mighty work from cover to cover before going to Israel. It inspired me in a way I can't explain, except to say it is, indeed, a sacred text with the power to open one's spiritual ears and eyes. My favourite verse remains one from Genesis: "And Jacob was left alone and there was a man that wrestled with him until the breaking of the day." Contemplating this image, awed optimism overwhelms me.
