Catriona Silvey was born in Glasgow and grew up in Scotland and England. After collecting an unreasonable number of degrees from the universities of Cambridge, Chicago, and Edinburgh, she moved back to Cambridge where she lives with her husband and son. Her short stories have been performed at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize.
Silvey's new novel is Meet Me in Another Life.
At the Waterstones blog she tagged five favorite books in the "rich tradition of tales that make the most of a time-bending conceit," including:
Life After Life by Kate AtkinsonRead about another entry on the list.
Ursula is born in 1910, and immediately dies. The next time round, things go better. Atkinson’s use of literarystream-of-consciousness takes on a new, time-slipping significance as her protagonist lives and relives the first half of the twentieth century. Isolated by her unique situation, Ursula sometimes treats people more as inconveniences than as fellow human beings (like poor Bridget the maid, pushed down the stairs to prevent Ursula’s death by Spanish flu). But as the Second World War looms, the arc of Ursula’s story moves away from creating her perfect life towards sublimating herself in the service of something greater: “We can never get it right, but we must try.”
Life After Life is among Clare Mackintosh's ten great books with “What if?” moments, Emily Temple's fifty best contemporary novels over 500 pages, Miriam Parker indisputably best dogs in (contemporary) literature, Liese O'Halloran Schwarz's top ten books about self-reinvention, Caitlin Kleinschmidt tagged twelve moving novels of the Second World War, Jenny Shank's top five innovative novels that mess with chronology, Dell Villa's top twelve books from 2013 to give your mom, and Judith Mackrell's five best young fictional heroines in coming-of-age novels.
--Marshal Zeringue
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