That’s how the novelist Sarah Perry only half-jokingly describes being raised a Strict Baptist, which meant there was “an almost complete absence of contemporary culture in the house.” But there were plenty of old books:
Aside from the odd humiliation at school (asked which film star I fancied most, I remembered seeing Where Eagles Dare at an uncle’s house and said, “Clint Eastwood”) I don’t remember feeling deprived. Because beside the Pre-Raphaelite prints that were my celebrity posters, and the Debussy that was my Oasis, there were books – such books, and in such quantities! Largely content to read what would please my parents, I turned my back on modernity and lost myself to Hardy and Dickens, Brontë and Austen, Shakespeare, Eliot and Bunyan.
And of course she goes on to describe being immersed in the King James Bible and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. How all this impacted her writing:
The effect on my writing has been profound, and inescapable: I soaked it all up, and now I’m wringing it out. My obsession with rhythm and beauty comes, I’m sure, from memorising the King James Bible’s peerless prose, and having grown up in the shade of sin and the light of redemption I suppose it’s no surprise that my debut novel After Me Comes the Flood has been called uncanny, sinister, strange (though I never intended to write that way – it’s just how my eyes were put in).
Sometimes I’m tempted to regret the youth that left me always a little at a loss, never quite belonging anywhere – but mostly I’m thankful it filled me with wonder at the strangeness of things, and gave me my voice.
The Dish 