Writer Evie Wyld. Right - Author Evie Wyld.
 
The Comfort of Strangers - Ian McEwan
One of the first adult novels I read as a kid - it seemed to me to be about my parents getting murdered in Venice. The feel of the story is still with me 20 years later. It was the first time I'd read a book that didn't tie up its endings neatly and in a way that you felt safe after reading.

Cloudstreet - Tim Winton
The first book I read that made me want to write. I got the wrong idea about writing from it, though. I was desperate to know what the characters were up to now and I pictured Tim Winton having a spin-off series in his head. I was obsessed with this book as a teenager. I wanted to be every character. It made life seem amazing and sprawling.
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men - Walker Evans and James Agee
This started life as an article about sharecroppers in the deep south of America in the 1940s. Agee was there to write the article and Evans to take the photographs. It emerged as this extraordinary book. It is an inventory of a family's home, part witness to poverty and the brutal way in which they live. It's not easy to read but it is an astonishing piece of art.

The Dog of the Marriage - Amy Hempel
This is a wonderful collection of very short stories. The Harvest was one I used to go back to again and again to try and understand how she had managed such a stunning and strange story in so few words. It's about a young woman recovering from a motorbike accident, except that it really is not about that at all. She marries tragedy and humour fantastically well.

I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
Best known for 101 Dalmatians, Smith wrote this while living in America during World War II, and feeling homesick for England. There's a real joy in the treatment of landscape - Smith's homesickness shows. The protagonist is an eccentric teenage girl called Cassandra, and her voice is powerful and funny. You think you have a handle on what kind of book it is, but it turns out to be something quite different.

Evie Wyld runs a small independent bookshop in London. She was recently named by Granta magazine as one of Britain's top 20 writers under 40. Her new novel, All the Birds, Singing, is published by Vintage.