Diana Henry picks her favourite books
The food writer shares works by Claire Keegan, Molly O'Neill and Richard Yates

The award-winning food writer chooses the books that have most affected her. Her audiobook, "Around the Table, 52 Essays on Food and Life" is on Audible and Spotify now, and published by Mitchell Beazley in October.
Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates, 1961
I would need to live several lives before I'd have the insight to write this. A collapsing marriage – the resentment, the longing for more, the imagined conversations – and the shattering of the American Dream in 1950s suburbia. This shook my soul.
Foster
Claire Keegan, 2010
Claire Keegan's writing is spare, small scale. She leads you into what you think is a small world – a young girl is taken to stay with a childless couple while her mother has another baby – but it's a huge world where love brings hope and disappointments are made bearable. A perfect novel.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
A Thousand Acres
Jane Smiley, 1991
Sisters in Iowa fight over the inheritance of their father's farm when he decides to retire. A brutal story about what families are capable of, with more than an echo of "King Lear". I read it in one sitting.
Say Nothing
Patrick Radden Keefe, 2018
An account of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, with the actions of IRA volunteer Dolours Price (she tried to blow up the Old Bailey) and the kidnap and murder of mother Jean McConville at its centre. The structure of such a complex narrative is breathtaking, as is the way Radden Keefe inhabits the minds of those involved. I grew up in the Troubles and could almost smell the Northern Irish countryside.
A Well-Seasoned Appetite
Molly O'Neill, 1995
Molly O'Neill writes about food better than anyone else. It's not her recipes but her prose. A granita is a "shale of glassy crystals", and her first taste of aubergines is like a short story: she eats the smoky flesh while listening to the local radio station and news of Watergate.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
6 sun-drenched homes by the sea
Feature Featuring a large patio overlooking the ocean in Laguna Beach and a marble rainfall shower in Norwalk
-
Garsington Opera opens its summer festival with two 'very different productions'
The Week Recommends A 'fabulous' new staging of Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades and Donizetti's fake-love-potion comedy L'elisir d'amore
-
The Rehearsal series two: Nathan Fielder's docu-comedy is 'laugh-out-loud funny'
The Week Recommends Television's 'great illusionist' has turned his attention to commercial airline safety
-
The Ballad of Wallis Island: bittersweet British comedy is a 'delight'
The Week Recommends A reclusive millionaire lures his favourite folk duo to an island for an 'awkward reunion'
-
Aston Martin Vantage Roadster: 'a rare treat indeed'
The Week Recommends The Roadster version of Aston Martin's new Vantage coupé makes even 'the most mundane journey feel special'
-
Bad Friend: Tiffany Watt Smith explores why women abandon friendships
The Week Recommends A 'deeply researched' account of female friendship through history
-
Film reviews: The Phoenician Scheme, Bring Her Back, and Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
Feature A despised mogul seeks a fresh triumph, orphaned siblings land with a nightmare foster mother, and a Jane fan finds herself in a love triangle
-
Music reviews: Tune-Yards and PinkPantheress
Feature "Better Dreaming" and "Fancy That"