Her latest book is a celebration of novels about love – but which are the ones she most ardently admires and loves?
As an author, Ella Risbridger has published award-winning memoir and cookbooks, children’s fiction and volumes of poetry. But as a reader, it is romance novels that she always comes back to and that “have my heart like nothing else”.
Her latest book, In Love with Love, is a celebration of romantic fiction, its rich history and many forms, taking both a literary and personal approach to a genre that is so often dismissed or disparaged.
So, of the many books about love she has explored, from Jane Austen to Jilly Cooper, which are the ones she most ardently admires and loves?
Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido
“Girl meets genius lecturer; girl meets compelling older lecherer; girl meets beautiful boy; girl meets irritating brother of boy; girl falls in love with all of them, and their family and life unfurls from there. Katherine is 19, obsessed with clothes and literature, and she is taken by her seedy older lover (black sheets!) to the home of her new university lecturer, Jacob Goldman.
“There she meets Jacob’s sons, beautiful Roger and tricky Jonathan, their younger siblings, and their mother, Jane, a pregnant Madonna in jeans tending the vegetable garden. Katherine falls in love with everything, including both boys. Funny, exquisite, and in my top three books of all time.”
Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
“Kevin Kwan is the kind of novelist you thought they didn’t make any more: a social satirist of the upper classes who is actually funny, and knows how to put a plot in. If you have only seen the 2018 film, you are missing out. This immaculately told love story is the vehicle for Kwan to vault the fourth wall with joyful abandon, gossip shamelessly about Singapore high society, and generally spill the tea. Come for the kissing, stay for the vibes.”
The Morning Gift by Eva Ibbotson
“This novel is a romance, but also a book about Goethe and bedbug eggs and sea-glass; striped pyjamas and Mozart and one-eyed puppies; science, wine, and unbelievable emeralds. It is about bigotry, fascism, anti-intellectualism, vanity, money, pain, loss, betrayal and the complexities of war. Eva Ibbotson thought of her true work as children’s books (she wrote more than 20), and her romantic fiction as ‘books for people with flu’. When afflicted with flu, spiritual or otherwise, there is nobody better than Ibbotson. A perfect read in every way.”
The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory
“Jasmine Guillory is one of the best romance writers working today. Her first book, The Wedding Date, offers a classic fake-dating scenario that happens to start with the two leads trapped in a lift eating cheese. I was in from the top. Excellent jokes, beautiful vibes, delicious tension. Also, I love a literary ‘cinematic universe’: this is the first in a series of Guillory novels set in this world, with the lead in each successive book a minor character in the one that came before.”
Harriet by Jilly Cooper
“You have to have a Jilly, don’t you? While I have so much love for Riders and for Rivals (perfect book, perfect telly), Harriet is my Jilly. Harriet, unexpectedly pregnant, is abandoned by her horrible rat boyfriend, drops out of Oxford, moves to Yorkshire, and takes – with her baby – a job as nanny to the children of screenwriter Cory Erskine. Chaos, kittens, babies, baths, sex, cigarettes, enormous dogs named Sevenoaks, single dads, horses, Heathcliff country, and some of Cooper’s best writing.”
In Love with Love: The Persistence and Joy of Romantic Fiction by Ella Risbridger is published by Sceptre, £16.99
