Any of us probably has at least half a dozen favourite books. I know I do, but recently I was given one of them again, and therefore it’s my current favourite book.

I was a first-year English Literature student in 1981, studying little, all my effort going into making theatre, making friends, growing up — and reading. I’d had Catcher in the Rye ruined for me by an English teacher, my friends were adoring For Esmé — with Love and Squalor (that title!), and Franny and Zooey (the first generation of girl students blessed with Virago-green covers and Women’s Press stripes, we were hungry for women writers and women protagonists) — but for me, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction was the loveliest of the Salingers. Two seemingly disparate stories, written four years apart, which together show all that is best about a story, and all that might be best about writing. Back then, I read them as one great story and one wild, volatile, delicious, hilarious — and slightly mad — observation on humanity, family, hope. This year I read them as an exquisite example of the perfect American short story (and a timely reminder that Manhattan was wonderful long before Mad Men), followed by an object lesson in what writing is (or should be)* about.

This perfectly-matched, bittersweet couple, best for a train journey to an uncertain destination, speaks to the reader and the writer, thanking the reader for being purely a reader (rather than what I’m doing here, however kindly meant) and reminding the writer that what the reader really wants is that we just get on with the story.

I’m really looking forward to what I find when I read it in another 27 years.

* The parentheses are, I hope, homage, not pastiche.

Stella Duffy will be appearing at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival at 4pm on Tuesday, 13 October

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