not for the first time, of
course. I have finished many books before, and sometimes I have started them
all over again. Like Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie
series which I have read four or five times, perhaps as an antidote to my Inner-London
childhood. As I walked up from the station this evening talking to my work
friend, we discovered that we remembered the same passages about making maple
syrup candy in the snow and building log cabins from scratch.
I finished War and Peace a few weeks after I started it in 1979. The
explanation for my dedication is partly Tolstoy's genius, and partly the crush
I had on a guy I wanted to impress. I had my response ready should he ever ask
me what I was reading.
But over the years, things have changed. As an academic, I
have developed the dry and necessary habit of getting what I must from a book -
using the index and chapter headings to find sections which give me the
essential point or definition. It's rare in these circumstances to read a whole
text. And it's not often I read a collection of poetry from cover to cover in
one sitting. It does happen: Douglas Dunn's Elegies.
But usually, I dip in, mull over, and stare into the distance, get distracted.
In short, I've developed unsatisfactory habits.
My habits have become so
unsatisfactory, that I turned up to my last book group struggling even to
remember the title of the book we were to discuss. It's a lovely group, and I
joined in the discussion from my position of ignorance incurring no judgement,
but I realised I had reached a new reading low.
So I've taken enormous pleasure not only in reading, but also in
finishing Maggie O'Farrell's I am I am I am in two sittings (it could
easily have been one had not work intervened). This experience of utter
book-absorption reconnected me to the feelings I had on those childhood
afternoons as they grew into dark evenings when, propped on one hand, I
resisted all calls of nature as I wandered around Narnia, or Northanger Abbey,
or 221B Baker Street.
O'Farrell's beautifully structured book recalls 'seventeen brushes
with death' and does so with vivid immediacy. She achieves that remarkable
balance that is so compelling - revelation woven seamlessly with recognition.
She led me through her deeply moving stories, to encounters with my own fears and
existential experiences. And I am grateful.
