Shelf Life: Emily St. John Mandel

Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you’re here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.

For fans of Station Eleven (book, HBO series, both), the television adaptations of Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel and Sea of Tranquility (coming out in Vintage paperback this month) can’t come soon enough. And this time, Mandel is working on them with Patrick Somerville, who brought the National Book Award finalist Station Eleven to Emmy-nominated life. The NYT-bestselling author is currently at work on a new novel, which, as Mandel has done before, features characters from her previous books, as well as a screenplay of her first novel, Last Night in Montreal, which was rejected by more than 35 publishers.

The Vancouver Island-born, Brooklyn- and L.A.-based Mandel is a dual citizen (her father is from California); has written four other novels (TGH and SOT were favorites of President Obama); was homeschooled, left high school one credit short of a diploma, attended community college for a year, then attended the School of Toronto Dance Theatre; is descended from William the Conqueror; worked at a cancer lab at Rockefeller University; spends lots of time on Reddit seeing how people interact; would have been named Llewellyn if she’d been a boy; likes Marianne McGinnis art and Anine Bing blazers; was a Jeopardy! clue; and has had short hair ever since she saw Girl, Interrupted. Good at: Piano. Not good at: Driving. Her greenlit titles below.

The book that:

…I recommend over and over again:

Irène Némirovsky’s Suite Française. There’s something kind of miraculous about that novel.

…made me rethink a long-held belief:

I was convinced I had zero interest in horror until I read Dan Chaon’s novel Ill Will. I read it twice.

…I read in one sitting, it was that good:

Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi. I started reading one evening when I’d just put my daughter to bed, in one of those awkward “It’s too early for bed but I’m too tired to be awake” moments, and was still reading hours later. I found it magnificent.

…currently sits on my nightstand:

A novel by Jade Sharma called Problems. I picked it up in Los Angeles without knowing anything about it, and it sucked me in. It’s disturbing and I love it.

…I last bought:

I just ordered a few books that I’m picking up later today: Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel for me, and the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman for my six-year-old.

…has the best title:

Nick Harkaway always thinks of the best titles. I could’ve titled at least three of my novels The Gone-Away World if he hadn’t thought of it first.

…helped me become a better writer:

Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song. I find Mailer a bit hit-or-miss, but before I read that book, my prose style was much more ornate. His prose in that book is a marvel of clarity and precision and it had an enormous impact on me.

…features the most beautiful book jacket:

I have a gorgeous UK edition of Jeff VanderMeer’s The Southern Reach trilogy—Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance—that I picked up at Foyle’s in London during one of the Station Eleven tours. I would love those books no matter what they looked like, but this particular set is in shades of white and silver and looks gorgeous on the shelf.

…I asked for one Christmas as a kid:

I asked for Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient for Christmas when I was 14. I avoided the film adaptation, and it’s one of those books I’m afraid to reread, because my memories of it are so beautiful.

…taught me this Jeopardy!-worthy bit of trivia:

J.M. Ledgard’s Submergence taught me how deep the ocean is. I’ve been thinking about the hadal deep ever since. The deepest trenches go down over 30,000 feet; in other words, the depth is about equal to the distance between an airplane and the Earth’s surface.

Bonus question: If I could live in any library or bookstore in the world, it would be:

I wouldn’t mind taking up residence in the apartment at Shakespeare & Company in Paris and maybe just reading for six months.