Tessa Hadley, novelist: 'Mavis Gallant is never, ever obvious'

The author discusses Juan Pablo Villalobos, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, and the responsibility of a study

Hadley says: 'I like to feel there's something provisional about my writing space' (Mark Vessey)

Where are you now and what can you see?

In London, at my desk – an old Pembroke table, a relic from childhood. I can see piles of books and notebooks, a white wall, a few significant prints and postcards which have faded – now I examine them closely – to blue-green. I'd never put my desk where I could look out of the window.

What are you currently reading?

Down the Rabbithole, by Mexican novelist Juan Pablo Villalobos, about a lonely little boy longing for a pygmy hippopotamus, holed up in a hideout with his narco father and his tutor. Sounds whimsical but it's not, it's very brilliant and funny.

Choose a favourite author and say why you admire her/him

Canadian short story-writer Mavis Gallant, for her compression, her comedy, her anthropological scope, and the fact she's never, ever obvious.

Describe the room where you usually write

We have a small flat, I write in the bedroom. I always wrote in the bedroom, even when we had a three-storey house in Cardiff: it's a sort of superstition, I'm afraid of the responsibility of a study, I like to feel there's something provisional about my writing space.

Which fictional character most resembles you?

Oh, one of those watchful, awkward Englishwomen at the periphery of old-fashioned novels.

Who is your hero/heroine from outside literature?

I keep changing my mind, there are too many. I saw a TV programme about scientist Jocelyn Bell Burnell and thought she was wonderful, but I don't really understand the astrophysics.

Tessa Hadley is judging the Wellcome Book Prize 2016, whose shortlist is revealed in March. Her latest novel is 'The Past' (Jonathan Cape)