The Books That Made Me
In my first year of school, we were given our first book to read, and told to take it home. It was a picture-book, with only a smattering of words. Our teacher, understandably, didn’t have a great deal of faith in four year olds to keep the borrowed school books in pristine condition. We each were given a sandwich bag into which the book was placed each day. I don’t remember the contents of that book; I have a very vague memory of a pastel-coloured sky, and a house with pleasingly curved edges. More than that, I remember with great clarity the feeling of taking the book out of its bag each night and afternoon, pleased to feel each time that it had not lost its sheen, that the edges still were perfect, the pictures unmarred. During my teenage years, I had no such care for my books: I would drop them onto the floor beside my bed, open on the page I had finished; they would pile up, covering the surfaces around my bed, dog-eared and battered. I have, after some years, reverted back to my four year old self, pinching the sides of books with care, mindful of their place, weary of damage. Sometimes when I pick up a particularly beautiful book, I think of my first teacher, Miss Fitzpatrick, scanning to make sure we knew the value of what we held.
A quote I often return to is Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “I cannot remember all the books that I have read, any more than the meals that I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” I can’t recall with great detail the books I read as a child, though I remember Judy Moody, Enid Blyton, Harry Potter. I followed dutifully along with the changing tides of Young Adult fiction: the vampire phase, followed by the dystopian phase, then the weepy romances. Somewhere along the way, I read The Picture of Dorian Grey, the first work of adult literature I had encountered, and felt electrified by the entirely singular wit and elegance of Wilde. I remember feeling genuinely bewildered that something so brilliant could exist. After finishing it, I walked into the bookshop and looked around with a sort of spine-tingling feeling, and went to the literature section, and gawked at the titles there, and experienced the dawning realisation that there were more stories just like it.
Unquestionably, the book that most formed me was Jane Eyre. I am content in the knowledge that there is nothing that I can say about this remarkable book that hasn’t already been said. It’s a comfort to know that the character who taught me so much has done so for centuries past, and will continue to do so for centuries more. It is difficult to imagine a character more fully realised than Jane. The tranquil reflections, along with the tumultuous, passionate revolt; that they exist all at once, in one mind, stuns and amazes me with every read. And the quietly revolutionary idea that somehow is shocking still – that a love story between a plain girl and an ugly man is as worthy as all the rest.
When I was in college, I read Ulysses and became, I’m sure, quite insufferable. I don’t think that it’s an overexaggeration to say that there is no book to rival it. For all of its brainy intellect, it is a novel of enormous heart and feeling: I sobbed at Bloom’s glancing thoughts of the dissolution of his marriage, and the gaping wound at the heart of the book, the loss of his child, a father searching for a son who does not exist, finding some approximation of it in the grief-stricken Stephen. I have found that analysis can be cold; the technical and sometimes unfeeling picking apart of themes and ideas, motifs and allusions can seem, at times, as though it’s missing the point of the fundamental enjoyment of a story. In this book, I felt that there was bliss in analysis; it was a joy to unriddle some of Joyce’s paradoxes and puzzles, while feeling still that deep satisfaction that most novels aim to convey: a connection to someone who does not exist. To walk through Dublin on Bloomsday, and see the book come alive, to see Joyce’s world unravel a hundred years later is a testament to an enduring work of genius, yes – but more so, to the unquenchable love that exists for stories, and a lasting celebration of empathy.
I find that books that impact me the most are novels that are written with a distinct voice, or when you can feel the genuine tenor of someone’s thoughts. You see it in the like of Naoise Dolan’s electrifying wit, or the dreamlike philosophical musings of Elif Batuman, or the precision and delicacy of Kazuo Ishiguro. A writer whose works have recently brought me immense joy is Mary Renault. In particular, her historical fiction is a revelatory marriage of academic attention to detail and an empathic connection to her subjects, written with both love and longing. I recently read her novel The Praise Singer, a book that is criminally under-read, and which left me despondent once I had reached its end; I am still looking for a book to meet its match.
Aisling Rawle, Author of The Compound
Fiction Book of the Month for July
