The Books That Made Me
The summer I was four, my mum read E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web to me and my elder sister. Although I can no longer recall the story, I do remember that at some point, my mum was unable to go on reading through her tears. And so my aunt took over, although after just a few pages, she too was forced to hand the book on, this time to my father to attempt to read dry-eyed. That afternoon, at a subconscious, cellular level, I think I absorbed something about the emotional impact a well-told story can have on both children and adults, and how it can invite us to simultaneously inhabit the same imagined space.
My mum continued to read to us as young teenagers. My sister would listen draped across an armchair, while I hung upside-down over the arm of the sofa. The novel that best captures that time is Anne of Green Gables. Anne was a heroine we found immediately loveable, and I was surprised to realise it was because of her uniqueness, rather than in spite of it. And when Anne lamented her name and said she longed to be Cordelia, for the first time, my own then-uncommon name felt like something that might be acceptable, desirable even.
Most nights, I devoured books by torchlight beneath the covers. But during the long summer between GCSEs and A Levels, for the first time, reading felt like work. I trudged first through Jane Austen’s Emma, then Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, resenting the densely worded pages and Jane’s interminable stay at Lowood. But in September, when we began to analyse them chapter by chapter, annotating the margins, and discussing the subtleties of the text, they came alive for me. And then I loved them in a soul-whizzing, Catherine-wheeling, sort of way. I think that was the year I started to notice the craftsmanship in how something was written.
Away at university, I spent what little spare money I had in the vast city-centre bookshop. But it was one of the set texts on my course that really stood out from that time. Reading Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, sparked a lifelong love of non-fiction books that focus on the brain and the way we think, feel, and process the world.
In adulthood, it’s these same qualities that I often look for in fiction. What makes us the way we are? What shapes our thinking? Am I normal? Is anyone normal? I crave the reassurance of finding parts of myself in a book’s characters, but also the fresh delight of meeting people nothing like me. Sometimes I read for pure entertainment, but more often it’s to try and make sense of the world, which feels more possible through the well-rounded lens of fiction than the news. I’ve loved the quiet perfection of Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, the heart-soaring ending of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet, the humanity in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North & South (has any man loved with more constancy and willingness to change than John Thornton?), the indomitable spirit of the characters in Olivia Hawker’s One For the Blackbird, One For the Crow, the integrity in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, the familiar sibling humour in Meg Mason’s Sorrow & Bliss. On another day, I could pick an entirely different line-up of books though. One that might include Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere (I loved the way Celeste wrote about creativity), Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance, Maile Meloy’s Liars & Saints, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake. I also love books of essays or case-studies – some favourites being Ann Patchett’s These Precious Days, and Stephen Grosz’ The Examined Life. And of the books I once shared with my now-adult children, the novel we look back on most fondly is R J Palacio’s Wonder, a story about acceptance and kindness.
It’s a source of regret that often, sometimes just days after turning the last page, I’ll remember the feel of a book more than specifics of character or plot. But I’ve come to think it’s already worked its magic by then – that somewhere in the reading, I’ve been touched by its characters in the same way I might by knowing someone in real life, the story shifting my thinking a fraction of a degree, and the mental images its conjured added to an imagined landscape tucked away in my mind.
Florence Knapp, Author of The Names
Fiction Book of the Month for May
