But when I moved to London at 22, I started to read and discovered all the bookshops. It wasn’t my world, and it certainly wasn’t my destiny.

I grew up in a very ordinary town in New Zealand, so it felt beyond the realms of possibility. It wasn’t books that made me want to write fiction – it was bookshops. To turn up 18 years later for my book launch last week felt really, really special. It was quite a peculiar time – and I was intensely lonely – and I’d go in there, look at the books and think, “I’ll never do this because I’m a mother.” I thought being a mother had come at the cost of my career. That’s the shop I remember going to when I’d just had my first baby at 25. It's the most astonishing story – everyone should read it. It was one of those books that within a few pages I knew I’d never forget. I also read The Boy With The Top Knotby Sathnam Sanghera, who I worked with 20 years ago. It follows a family through the homelessness system in the US, focusing on one particular girl as she and her family make their way from shelter to shelter. I recently read an incredible non-fiction book called Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott.

Right now, I’m reading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and have Nell Frizzell’s upcoming novel Square One lined up after that. When I read these days, it’s always a mix of classics interspersed with whatever new book is coming out. I have enormous gaps in my knowledge and I'm slowly filling them in. At the time everybody else was endlessly reading the classics and building up their literary knowledge, I was at The Body Shop trying on all the White Musk products before heading to McDonald's with my friends. I didn't read for pleasure until I was about 19. This is my third book, but I'm not an established literary figure, so when it’s a huge prize that’s a big part of the book community, you almost feel like an outsider. I worked hard on the book, but the reward has outstripped the effort. It kept building and building to the point where I’ve been shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. There’s been an accumulation of incredible things – whether it's someone writing a really nice letter, then somebody reviewing it kindly, or hearing someone's passed it on to a friend. Anything that happened afterwards was a bonus. I wrote this book with no ambition other than to write it. It was released in the US and in Australia where I live, but the book is set in the UK, so it's been nice because it feels like it's returned home – even though it wasn't written here by someone who's from here. I didn't have a profile in the UK before its release, so I've been fortunate. Sorrow & Bliss has been a huge word-of-mouth hit.

Meg mason book