A writer aims to alter her readers' view of the world

CAMBRIDGE -- Novelist Margot Livesey is fond of rocks. She gathers prize specimens from beaches and by streams, here in the United States as well as in her native Scotland.

And at her three-story townhouse in Cambridge, they line window sills and bookshelves and sit in small pottery bowls on a window seat in the dining room. In a corner sits a pile of six oval stones, one on top of the other: part art, part nature, and inspired by fellow Brit and nature artist Andy Goldsworthy. Livesey flips through a book of Goldsworthy's work, explaining how he uses rocks, branches, flowers, and more "to make you see the landscape differently."

Livesey wants to help her readers view the world differently, too. In "The Missing World" (2000), she delves into the importance of memory and how dependent we are on memories to make our lives whole. Her fourth novel, "Eva Moves the Furniture" (2001), explores a bit of the supernatural. In all four of her novels and many short stories, "I'm very conscious about entertaining readers," she says in a charming Scottish accent.

Originally from rural Scotland, about 10 miles from Perth, Livesey has lived in the United States since 1983; she and her husband, Eric Garnick, married four years ago and moved to the Cambridge house in 2002.

Occupying most of the ground floor is Garnick's art studio, a spacious room created when the couple had flooring installed to cover an empty, inground swimming pool. Canvases, clips of art, and finished and unfinished paintings are spread about; clearly the couple's need for work space outweighed any desire for morning laps.

On the home's second level are living room, dining room, kitchen, and a sliver of an office that Livesey uses for paying bills, writing letters, and reading and grading papers each fall, when she teaches writing at Emerson College. A corner bookcase she calls her "vanity shelf" holds her own books, in various printings and reproductions.

Her "creative space" is another flight up, at the top of the stairs. The study is warm and bright, thanks to two skylights on the slanted roof, and other books, filed alphabetically, line an entire wall. On another wall, above two hip-height bookcases, is a collage of family photographs including those of her grandparents, parents, a turn-of-the-century wedding photo (she notes that the dressed-up babies look like puffy meringues), and other family members. "The plump child is my father," she says, pointing to a photograph of a young boy. He later became a school teacher. The young woman holding Livesey as a baby is her mother, Eva, who died when Livesey was 2 1/2.

Livesey lived with her father and stepmother and with a guardian family. Livesey has no children, but is close to those of her adopted family, who live in England and Scotland. "I've done well at acquiring relatives," she says with a smile.

The author remembers how important books were to her as a child. "I grew up reading long Victorian novels such as `Wuthering Heights,' `Great Expectations,' and `Jane Eyre,' which had gripping plots. These books had a huge impact on me," she says.

What inspires Livesey most is when her "private interests or preoccupations intersect with something that is publicly interesting." In her fifth novel, "Banishing Verona," due out in November, one of the characters has Asperger syndrome, often described as a high-functioning level of autism. The disorder, she says, "is an interesting lens through which to look at behaviors and life experiences."

Most of Livesey's stories have been set in Scotland and England. "I have a more intimate knowledge of people there from my childhood," she says, but Boston is one of the settings in "Banishing Verona." Fiction is her preferred form, though she admits, "little bits and pieces of me are buried in the characters."

That's true of her mother, too, at least in "Eva Moves the Furniture," whose lead character shares her mother's name. "It was my attempt to write about her," says Livesey.

Books dominate her interests, but art maintains a strong presence in her home, too. Garnick's abstract paintings hang on walls, as do colorful pottery plates made by her in-laws, who are ceramic artists.

When Livesey isn't at home in Cambridge or at writers' conferences around the country, she's spending a few months each year at a flat she owns in London. Splitting her time between the country where she grew up and the one where she has worked most of her adult life comes naturally to her. She can never be sure where inspiration -- or more beautiful rocks -- will appear.