The Books That Made Me – Claire Daverley
It was Ralph Waldo Emerson who said: “I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” In many ways, I can relate to this – as a lifelong avid reader, there are arguably more books I’ve forgotten than remembered, but isn’t that what makes the memorable ones all the more special?
My love affair with books started before I could even read, thanks to my dad reading to me, when he came home from work. Picture books by Mick Inkpen would fill me with wonder and delight, which to this day, I treasure like old friends. The Blue Balloon. One Bear at Bedtime. Threadbear (my heart!) These stories taught me how to care about characters and creatures and the lives of others – and care, so deeply, I did, encouraged by my mother who would take me to the library, every week, once I’d started to read on my own.
Fiction, I found, was a way of inhabiting a different life but also expanding my heart, teaching me empathy and compassion as a young solo reader. The emotive, family-led stories by Jacqueline Wilson were the ones that stayed with me. Rather than the likes of Tracy Beaker (as fun as she was), I connected with the melancholy undertones of The Suitcase Kid, The Illustrated Mum and Vicky Angel. Stories that danced between light and dark were already my preference, as a child. I’d spend hours listening to Roald Dahl audio cassettes, but while I enjoyed the magic and whimsy of Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it was the lesser-appreciated Danny Champion of the World that was my unfaltering favourite. Why? Because it captured the realism of what it is to be human. Listening to that story, over and over, I was snuggled by the fire with Danny and his dad. Cosy in their bunks, yearning for the glorious richness of roast pheasant (when I’d never tasted such a thing), my heart quickening with the drama of searching for his father in the woods at night. There was no magic, here, beyond the real-life magic of a story well told. I loved reading for escapism as much as the next kid (The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson and The Two Princess of Bamaree need a shoutout), but it seemed the books that stirred something inside of me were the ones that captured those heartfelt scenes of living, loving, and learning how to be in our world.
The books as I read as a teenager took things a step further, and began to peel back layers of that world for me. Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman was the first book to make me cry – I still remember sitting on my bed as I closed the book, powerless against the tidal wave of heartbreak and injustice that broke over me – not just for Callum and Sephy, but for those who had truly lived through such prejudice and tragedy. Similarly, A Gathering Light by Jennifer Donnelly opened my eyes to the rigid expectations placed on women, and flung open a feminist door that led to my devouring of her Tea Rose trilogy, then books by other female writers that have forever stayed with me: Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld, The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath – all of which, in their own ways, explored the freedom, limitations and capacious spirits of their fantastic female characters.
But in adulthood, when I think of the standout books that have made me? Whether they’re realist, or magical, or emotional, or exploring the shades of a person’s history? It always comes back to love. The sparkle and shadow of what we feel, or what we want to feel. Books that – whilst not necessarily packaged as romance – are undeniably love stories at their core, showing that love is what we need to survive, the only thing that keeps us going, or makes sense, even if it doesn’t make sense. The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Both Normal People and Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. Cold New Climate by Isobel Wohl. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy. Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason. A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara. All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. The unrequited love in Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch still tugs at my sleeve, and the unpredictable loss in Emily Habeck’s Shark Heart crosses my mind most days. Makes me feel lucky, to live in a world where that is not my reality. Lucky, that there are books like that to read, and marvel at, and be humbled by.
These books confirm for me what it is I am continually drawn to reading, and in the same breath, find myself writing about: the fact that life is hard, in so many ways, but love makes everything worth it. And books are the vessels – the teachers – that prove this to me, time and again. How lucky we are, as readers, to have them as lifetime companions.
Claire Daverley, Author of People In Love
Fiction Book of the Month for June
https://www.clairedaverley.com/
