The Australian actress takes us through the novels she’s long loved, and the books that are currently commanding her attention.
To run a finger along the spines of the books Gabrielle Chanel collected, and displayed, at her apartment on rue Cambon was to touch the names of luminaries. Montaigne, Baudelaire, Shakespeare, Proust—all stood cover to cover in this hallowed space. “Books are my best friends,” the designer once reportedly confided in writer and friend Paul Morand. And though Chanel herself never published, she translated the written word into inspiration, and then, clothing: a story told in another form. Wrote Roland Barthes in 1967: “If today you open a history of our literature, you should find there the name of a new classical author: Coco Chanel. Chanel does not write with paper and ink (except in her leisure time), but with material, with forms and with colours.”
“However, this does not stop her being commonly attributed with the authority and the panache of a writer of the classical age: elegant like Racine, Jansenist like Pascal (whom she quotes), philosophical like La Rochefoucauld (whom she imitates by delivering her own maxims to the public), [and] sensitive like Madame de Sévigné.”
It is a love of literature that the modern house of Chanel, now helmed by Virginie Viard, pays consistent homage to. Her rue Cambon library sparked the setting for the maison’s autumn/winter ’19/’20 haute couture presentation; their more recent video series Les Rendez-vous littéraires rue Cambon sees Chanel muses, and writers, discuss the books that shaped them.
The latest celebrity bibliophile to make an appearance? Australian actress Phoebe Tonkin, whose newest project Boy Swallows Universe draws from a novel her mother gifted her two years ago. “We’re constantly giving each other books,” says Tonkin. “I was introduced to reading from a very, very young age. Both my parents are really avid readers, and reading was always really encouraged in our house. My dad always gives me books for my birthday. He’ll pick three or four books and send them to my apartment in New York.”
There are a handful of books that Tonkin holds dear. “I definitely love stories written by women,” she continues, “about complicated women, or the complications of being a young woman, or a girl.” She cites Ian McEwan’s Atonement as a particular favourite, as well as “books [she] read in school…between 14 and 17”: Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Little Birds by Anaïs Nin and Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides.
Here, we sit down with Tonkin to discuss the authors she cherishes, and the novels making a cameo on her to-read list this year.
Vogue Australia: Who are your favourite authors?
Phoebe Tonkin: Trent Dalton, Otessa Mosfegh, Jessica Knoll, Jane Austen, Lisa Tadeo, and Arundhati Roy.
Do you have any reading habits?
I love getting into the habit of reading before bed. Even if it’s just a chapter. I haven’t been so diligent with that lately as I have been travelling a lot but it’s definitely one of my 2024 resolutions!
Where do you like to read?
In bed, by a pool, on the beach.
What’s on your to-read list this year?
I am currently reading The Elissas by Samantha Leach, and I just finished Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll, which was incredible. So the year has started off well! I am looking forward to reading Lola in the Mirror, Trent Dalton’s new book. My girlfriends are all currently raving about A Court of Thorn and Roses so I will probably read that next.
What’s a book that some people might be surprised to find out that you like?
I loved Lemony Snicket’s books as a child, and I have been meaning to reread them. I also love to read self help books by Gabor Mate and last year I read The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk which was unbelievable. I also love Pema Chodron.
Published January 16, 2024
by Gladys Lai
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