Heather Critchlow on learning to read as a child, reading until she falls asleep and the book she recommends to everyone.
The first book I remember reading:
Little Bear Stories – I still remember the first two lines (It is cold. Look at the snow.) Every morning when I was learning to read, I’d wake up and reach out for the book so I could sit sounding out the letters until it was time to get up. One day, I opened the book and the letters just dissolved into words. That was it: I could read. The moment still seems magical. Little Bear has all sorts of adventures such as going to the ‘moon’ and making birthday cakes for his friends but always comes back to his Mother Bear.
A book I recommend to everyone:
Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka is a breathtakingly good crime novel about the last 12 hours of a man sentenced to die on death row. He’s arrogant and desperate for fame, but Kukafka ensures that three women in his life – his mother, sister-in-law and the detective who helped catch him – take centre stage. It’s beautifully written, spare and thought-provoking. I love that it takes the women and elevates them above the monster as my preoccupation in writing crime fiction is always the victim.
The best three books I have read in the last year:
The Under History by Kaaron Warren is a gorgeously gothic and creepy novel about a woman who is the only member of her family to survive a plane crashing into their mansion. She then creates a haunted house tour on the site. It’s truly original and strange.
I’m a huge fan of dystopian fiction and The Stranding by Kate Sawyer, about a women who climbs into the mouth of a dead whale on a beach in New Zealand to survive the apocalypse, broke me in all the best ways. I read it twice.
As an antidote to the darkness, The Art of Belonging by Eleanor Ray is a warm hug of a book about a mother and her estranged daughter. They are forced back together when the daughter’s marriage ends and have to confront their broken relationship.
A book I didn’t finish:
Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections is an American novel that was hailed as a masterpiece when it was published but left me cold. I just don’t think I’m highbrow enough to enjoy it! I also bought a non-fiction book a few summers ago based on a quirky title. When I started to read I discovered it was extremely right wing. After listening to me rant for a few chapters, my husband gently suggested I didn’t need to finish it. It’s the only book I’ve ever put in the bin.
An author who has inspired me:
I’m a huge fan of Maggie O’Farrell and have been since she was first published. Her writing is insanely good – in those days I was a student and was working in London Docklands teaching kayaking to children for the summer. I was so engrossed in After You’d Gone that I missed my stop, missed the fact that the driver had reached the depot and almost got locked on the bus. I had to walk a long way holding a set of paddles. I was in another world. It’s been wonderful to follow Maggie’s career – her work just gets better.
My favourite place to read:
The ideal scenario is to be curled up in bed on a Sunday afternoon, with a cup of tea and a box of chocolates, while the rain batters the window outside. Finish one book, grab another and keep going… bliss. In reality, I’m reading in bed, it’s late and the book hits me on the face when I doze off.
Heather Critchlow grew up in rural Aberdeenshire and draws on her experiences and memories of living there or her books. In 2023, her debut book, Unsolved, was shortlisted for the Bloody Scotland Scottish Crime Debut of the year. Her new book, Unsound, is publishing in September. 
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