Maggie Shipstead: 'Elena Ferrante made me reconsider how I write'

The novelist on polar exploration, Middlemarch and reading Donna Tartt in the pool My earliest reading memoryI remember lying in bed with my mother while she read picture books to me when I was three or four, but I think that's probably an amalgam memory, since she did this every night. I also remember her reading aloud to the whole family while we drove cross-country. Bunnicula by James and Deobrah Howe, about a vampiric rabbit, and its sequel Howliday Inn were big hits. My favourite book growi...