Liz Nugent has worked in Irish film, theater, and television for most of her adult life. She is an award-winning writer of radio and television drama and has written critically acclaimed short stories both for children and adults, as well as the bestselling novels Unraveling Oliver, Lying in Wait, and Little Cruelties. She lives in Dublin and has won four Irish Book Awards, as well as the James Joyce Medal for Literature.
Nugent's new novel is Strange Sally Diamond.
At the Guardian she tagged ten favorite opening lines in fiction, including:
Perfume by Patrick SüskindRead about the other entries on the list.In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages.France in this era, as represented in our art galleries, gave us female nudes, silk-clothed nobility in powdered wigs and pastoral images of the peasantry. Themost notable books of the century were Les Liaisons Dangereuses, depicting a time of decadence when France loosened her stays for a moment and Candide, bitterly satirical, blasphemous and seditious. And into this time comes a man, at once gifted and abominable. Here we have two questions: What is his great gift and more thrillingly, what is his abomination? The answers do involve female nudes but not in a way you could possibly predict.
Perfume is among Liz Boulter's ten best novels about France, Glenn Skwerer's top ten real-life monsters in fiction, four books that changed Meg Keneally, four books that changed Katrina Lawrence, Karen Runge's five (damn-near) perfect (dark) novels, and Lara Feigel's top ten smelly books.
--Marshal Zeringue