What’s the first book you remember reading as a child? Goldilocks And The Three Bears. My sisters read it to me so many times that I knew it off by heart. When I picked up the book by myself, I was able to associate the sounds with the words on the page and I think that created the apocryphal story that I was able to read before I went to school. I think I’d just memorised the book.

What was the book you read that made you decide to be a writer? A teacher gave me a copy of The Catcher In The Rye and it was my initiation into the world of ‘adult books’. This opened my mind as I’d never read anything like it and I didn’t know books could be like that. The books that stand out from my teenage years are The Bell Jar and The Sound And The Fury. Very different books but they made me consider how language could create the world.

What’s your favourite first line in a book? ‘It was a queer, sultry summer, the year they executed the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York’: The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath.

Which debut publication had the most profound effect on you? Wendy Erskine’s short-story collection Sweet Home; the stories are visceral and sexy and always surprising.

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up on a writing day? On a good day, I make coffee and get to the computer as quickly as possible before anything else can get between me and the page. On a bad day, I do everything not to write.

What’s the first thing you do when you’ve stopped writing for the day? I try to exercise as often as I can; part of my programme to stay sane.

In a parallel universe where you’re the tyrant leader of a dystopian civilisation, what’s the first book you’d burn? There’s no writer that I dislike enough to think their writing shouldn’t exist.

What’s the first piece of advice you’d offer to an aspiring novelist? Don’t focus too much on introspection in your writing. If you feel stuck, then make your characters interact and physically do something in the world. 

The Coast Road is published by Bloomsbury on Thursday 9 May; main picture: Lena Obst.