American writer Miranda Richmond Mouillot was born in North Carolina and now lives in the South of France with her husband, daughter and cat. She works as an independent translator and editor. Her memoir, A Fifty-Year Silence (Text Publishing), follows her journey to find out what happened to her French grandparents after World War II.
Eloise
Kay Thompson
From a very young age, Kay Thompson's Eloise books and Don Marquis' Archy and Mehitabel poems taught me the importance of always being a lady – in one's own fashion.
Under Milk Wood
Dylan Thomas
Acting in Under Milk Wood had a lifelong effect on me as a writer. It taught me the importance of voice in written text: if it doesn't come alive when it's read aloud, it doesn't work. And Thomas' inventiveness – the staggering beauty, and the masterful mix of humour and pathos. It's not quite poetry, not quite prose. Even if I fall on the side of prose in my own writing, I am always striving for that in-betweenness.
In Search of Lost Time
Marcel Proust
I can't pretend to have read all of In Search of Lost Time but Proust's writing was a tremendous influence all the same. In the French he is staggeringly inventive; he writes with such laser-like precision – and at the same time with such wonder. The evocative power of everyday objects, a strong theme in his work (we all know that famous madeleine!), is one to which I often return in my own writing.
The Kites
Romain Gary
The last novel of French writer and Resistance fighter Romain Gary is the best book I have ever read about France during World War II. It is both a ripping good story and a sobering reflection on the tragic human tendency to search for an enemy. It's funny and heartbreaking, dark and optimistic, tender and unsparing. I'm currently translating it into English.
