David Nicholls

It's a great underrated book, I think.

I think it's easily up there with The Catcher in the Rye.

And I absolutely love it.

It's always been a big inspiration for all my novels.

So my second choice, given that I'm in Australia, is a novella, another short book by Helen Garner, The Children's Bark.

I absolutely love Helen Garner's writing.

I think she's one of my favourite living writers.

She's written very few novels, but I really love them all, and I think this is my favourite.

The Children's Bach, again, is about a family, a very tight unit of four, who seem to be living a very comfortable, bohemian life in 70s Melbourne.

And this life is thrown into disarray by the arrival of a figure from the past.

The writing in this book, the prose, is just beautiful.

It's both very, very simple and deeply poetic.

And every sentence is just right.

And again, it's a book that I find very, very moving.

It's brilliant on family.

It's brilliant on the fragility of family life, on music, on the dangers of a kind of world bohemian lifestyle.

It's absolutely of its time and place, but it's full of timeless observations about parenthood and family.

And if you haven't read Helen Garner, then please do.

I think she's an extraordinary writer.

There's a huge amount of fantastic nonfiction, but her novels and novellas are absolutely wonderful.