Lucy Caldwell: ‘Even your text messages fizz after reading James Joyce’

The author on the power of folktales, being inspired by Ulysses – and the book that every woman should read My earliest reading memory The summer my middle sister was born, my mum and I would walk to the shops at Cherryvalley, in east Belfast, to do her messages, and she’d buy me the latest issue of Storyteller, illustrated tales from around the world. It came with a cassette tape of actors reading the stories, a ding to tell you when to turn the page. My favourite was a Japanese folktale called The Goblin Rat. I was only just two, but I listened to it, entranced

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