In “The Books That Built Me, by Justin Cartwright” published October 5, 2015 in the Sunday Times, the author—a writer himself and a judge for the Canadian Giller Prize last year—writes,

“If had to pick out one writer who influenced me most when I started, it would be Saul Bellow. What attracted me was his apparently effortless ability to deal with both the comedy of human life and the serious and intellectual. I found it intoxicating and have – in my own way – tried to do the same thing. There are descriptions in Saul Bellow’s books which are astonishing, and his description of the human face are absolutely brilliant. Very difficult to do with any originality. This too I have tried to emulate.”

He adds,

“I also loved the Rabbit books by John Updike, whom I knew quite well. The best of these is Rabbit at Rest, intensely moving as Rabbit heads for oblivion. I have written many times of Updike’s realism, his understanding of America and its people with all their idealism and longing, and I think that the Rabbit series are among the finest novels of the last quarter of the 20th century. He is certainly the finest chronicler of the ordinary life of the US in my lifetime.”

Cartwright’s latest book is Up Against the Night.