Lisa Unger is Ready to Try Middlemarch One More Time

Lisa Unger’s latest, The Red Hunter, is out now from Touchstone.

What was the first book you fell in love with?
I’ve been a voracious reader since early childhood—so it’s hard to pinpoint the moment when I first fell in love. But I think it must be Music For Chamelons by Truman Capote. His prose, the beauty of his imagery, the depth of his characters (some of them real) mesmerized me. I’d read a lot with great passion before this. But it was this collection of fiction and non-fiction short stories where I think I fell in love with language and the power it has to transport us. I still have the paperback I first read, all bent up and faded, sitting on my shelf.

Name a classic you feel guilty about never having read?
Middlemarch by George Eliot. I’ve tried and tried! I have never been able to access this highly acclaimed and much beloved classic. Why? I am going to try again as soon as I finish writing this!

What’s the book you reread the most?
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. This book changed my life and I turn back to its lessons again and again.

Is there a book you wish you had written?
The Incarnations by Susan Barker. I read this book last year and it was a transcendent reading experience—I was swept away into a world wholly different from my own. Her writing is brilliant, the story so layered and rich, the wild cast of characters—spanning centuries—vividly drawn. Barker has delivered an utterly original work, so of course only she could have written it. Perhaps it’s enough to say that this is one of the best books I’ve read—maybe ever.