From Stephen King’s avid fan in Misery to Nabokov’s disturbing tale of preteen Lolita, fixation is a powerful pull for authors – especially when it overlaps with desire

I’m not an obsessive person, but tell me a book is about obsession and I’m going to read it. Obsession is a natural motivator, requiring ever greater sacrifices, presenting increasing dangers to anyone standing in the way.



When you’re a new writer, struggling to make sense of your characters, there’s a simple question that unlocks everything else: What does your protagonist want? What a person wants from life, whether it’s happiness or money or love, powers every decision. And what is obsession, but wanting on steroids? It’s a canister of gasoline dumped over the flames of desire.

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Fixation was at the heart of my debut novel, The Possessions, from its very beginning, a constant element that stayed steady even as I worked and reworked everything else. The story centres on an organisation where clients reconnect with those they’ve lost, which struck me as the ideal setup for obsessive and forbidden love.

These 10 books examine obsession through different lenses, but all of them capture some of the addictive pull that’s inspired me as a writer and reader.

1. Moby–Dick by Herman Melville (1851)

Captain Ahab embodies obsession as completely as any character ever will. As he stalks the whale that took his leg, his burning need for vengeance pushes aside all other considerations. My husband, an English professor, loves the novel for what he’s dubbed the “Starbuck moment”, when the first mate pleads with Ahab to give up his quest before the whole crew suffers. It’s a moment when the captain has a final chance to pull back from the brink. When he pushes ahead with his doomed quest anyway, everything that follows is all the more shocking.

2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847)

Heathcliff and Catherine are the poster children for unhealthy romance, the train-wreck kind of love that’s hard to look away from. Sure, the love affair goes quickly downhill, a destructive passion that never finds a healthy outlet and has damaging implications for their families. But it’s fascinating to encounter someone so obsessed that he’ll alter his lover’s coffin to bring her closer after death.

3. Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller (2003)

Although a forbidden affair between a teacher and a student is at the centre of Heller’s novel, the deeper infatuation portrayed here is the platonic one between two friends. When a flighty pottery teacher, Sheba, gives in to an ill-advised sexual obsession with a teenager, disaster inevitably follows. We see Sheba through the eyes of her confidante and colleague, Barbara. Heller deftly explores the ways a close friendship can slide from co-dependence into something toxic and twisted.

4. Wilful Disregard by Lena Andersson (2013)

A high percentage of books about romantic obsession have male protagonists, so Andersson’s novel is refreshing for its willingness to look at sexual fixation with a woman’s gaze. Ester is well-read and intellectual, but all her philosophising can’t ease the hopelessness of her crush on a mercurial artist. I read Wilful Disregard full of both agonised secondhand embarrassment and admiration for Andersson’s crisp prose. Ester is maddening, lovable … and recognisable to anyone who’s ever had a day ruined by an unanswered text message.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes in the 1990 film adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery. Photograph: Allstar/Columbia

5. Misery by Stephen King (1987)

King takes a generally harmless trait – being a bookworm – and makes it bloodcurdling. Annie Wilkes imprisons and tortures an author, hoping to create a better end for her favourite heroine. There’s a slyness to King’s portrait of Annie; most of us have obsessed over a beloved character, and authors wield a special power over our emotional lives. At the same time, readers’ expectations hold sway over authors – King was partially inspired to write Misery by his fans’ vocal outcry when he attempted a genre other than horror.

6. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (2009)

Dr Faraday has been fascinated by the prestigious Ayre family since he was the young son of a humble maid. Now, time has whittled away the Ayres’ fortune, and Faraday is nearly on an equal financial footing with the once-lofty clan. When opportunity presents itself, he throws himself into the role of family physician and then adviser. Even as their lifestyle falls into ruins, the Ayres still symbolise a world of unachievable privilege and pedigree. As the novel progresses, it is difficult to say whether Faraday is engaging in social climbing or out for a darker revenge.

7. Possession: A Romance by AS Byatt (1990)

Roland Michell is an unknown scholar, dedicated to the long-dead poet Randolph Henry Ash. When he unearths a document that hints at Ash’s illicit love affair with another poet, Roland has to find out the full story. He joins forces with another scholar, Dr Maud Bailey, and their fascination with the buried past serves as an aphrodisiac. This multilayered tale plays with obsession at different levels: romantic and intellectual, past and present.

8. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

The very first paragraph of Nabokov’s controversial novel revels in the narrator’s all-consuming obsession: Humbert Humbert rhapsodises about Lolita’s name, each syllable as meaningful and intricate as a poem. The fact that Lolita is a 12-year-old is disturbing, and yet Humbert’s liveliness pulls the reader in, making you feel uncomfortably complicit. Lolita herself is nearly unknowable, totally warped by the lens of Humbert’s obsession.

9. You by Caroline Kepnes (2014)

Kepnes’s disturbingly funny novel is a stalker tale for the digital era. Joe Goldberg, a wry, self-righteous bookseller, has a meet-cute with Beck, an MFA student. His crush rapidly escalates into stalking. When Joe manages to steal Beck’s phone, he gains unprecedented access to her every thought and move. It’s the technological equivalent of mindreading, every bit as creepy as it sounds. As Joe increasingly crosses boundaries to keep his dream girl within his grasp, the second-person narrative gives the novel a queasy intimacy.

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10. The Vegetarian by Han Kang (2007)

When a woman abstains from eating meat, she grows gaunt and distant. Her family’s concern turns invasive when they attempt to force-feed her. At first, Kang’s fever dream of a novella reminded me of typical eating-disorder narratives. But any sense of familiarity in the story quickly slips away: Yeong-hye’s odd behaviour spreads like a virus, while her brother-in-law becomes dangerously fixated on Yeong-hye’s birthmark. This unnerving tale explores obsession as a dreamlike, primal urge that can undo whole families.

• The Possessions by Sara Flannery Murphy is published by Scribe, priced £12.99, and is available from the Guardian bookshop for £11.04, including free UK p&p.