What writers are especially good on mother-daughter relationships?

A key book for me was “Envy and Gratitude,” by Melanie Klein — perhaps, because she was a woman writing in psychoanalysis, Klein captured something I found telling about the connection between a baby (let’s call her a daughter) and its mother (let’s call her Mama, or Mary, or Hilary). The most amazing iteration of these difficulties and mysteries is in “Beloved,” by Toni Morrison, but more recently I also like “My Name Is Lucy Barton,” by Elizabeth Strout, “Are You My Mother?,” by Alison Bechdel, and “Letters Home,” by Sylvia Plath (the edition I read was edited by her mother, Aurelia). Now that I am a mother as well as a daughter I turn to the poets, who are better able to manage these perils and paradoxes: Sinead Morrisey, Eavan Boland, Sharon Olds, Anne Carson.

Do you prefer books that reach you emotionally, or intellectually?

Is this a question about temperature? I suppose I can take the chilly thing longer than the huggy thing. I can put up with horrible old Nabokov longer than, say, Louisa May Alcott — but not for much longer. Solipsism is enthralling but also boring (and finally often repulsive). I like Rachel Kushner and Deborah Levy, who are both pretty astringent, but even highly connected writers like Alice Munro are making a shape on the page, and it is the shape that moves me, as much or more than the lives she depicts.

How do you organize your books?

I don’t keep books in sight of visitors — they feel like personal items, somehow — so they all live downstairs in the basement. I have, in my study, a half-wall of books that I really like, but I have never told anyone where it is. Actually, no one goes into my study, not even me.

What book might people be surprised to find on your shelves?

I would be surprised to find anyone looking at my shelves.

What’s the best book you’ve ever received as a gift?

Can I tell you instead of the best book I ever gave? My mother used to talk about the first grown-up book she read, at the age of 7. She remembered where she was when she finished it (at the end of the dining room table), what day it was (a Tuesday), and where her own mother was as she finally closed the book (outside, in the kitchen). It was called “Hetty Gray,” by Rosa Mulholland, and, some years after the internet made such things possible, I took a notion and sourced a copy in a shop in New Zealand. So one morning, deep into her 80s, my mother received a small parcel from the other side of the world that contained a book she had read at the age of 7, with no note or indication of the source. After she read it again, she told me, she remembered all the first half, but not the second.

Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Your favorite antihero or villain?

My favorite characters are usually narrators. I am seldom torn by the moral and emotional hazards of characters who are described from the outside (an exception has to be Lily Bart in “The House of Mirth”). Patrick McCabe’s Francie Brady in “The Butcher Boy” was a bit of turning point in the Irish tradition, back in 1992, maybe I will pick him. Poor Francie is a murderer, but not quite a villain.

What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?

Some neighboring children have a story about making me read an encyclopedia when I was 3. I remember the game, or I think I do, but I don’t remember learning to read. My mother taught me, and that must have been such a pleasure. My life in books has been divided into public, showing-off reading (like this column, perhaps) and lovely, problematic, private reading ever since.