I don’t normally do this, once I’ve written a review that’s it. But nowadays I don’t normally get to re-read the books I love. I used to re-read, frequently. Sometimes if I loved a book, I’d read it again back to back, wanting the experience to continue. When I was much younger I had this naive dream that when I was retired I would have the opportunity to re-read all my favourite books at my leisure. But that was before the days of computers and the Internet and blogging. Nowadays, with so many books I already own, forlornly waiting on the shelves for me to select them, ( I often wonder if they are inwardly saying “pick me, pick me” as my hand hovers uncertainly and undecidedly over their enticing spines), with various proofs and arcs for blog tours and publishers, with library books, all clamouring for my reader hands to caress and commit to them re-reading has been a vague dream on the periphery of my reader brain. But in these pandemic, viral, lockdown days when I yo-yo from up to down, from inside to out, I strive for little ways to change the flow. Proofs and arcs have dried up now. Libraries are closed. Publishers are offering offering digital copies, and Reader, I don’t do e-books.
My shelves are shedding dust as I pluck one lucky volume after another. And so, to ring a change and create a new structure to my reading program I decided I would go to my 'forever' shelves and re-read one book a week.
I began with Elizabeth Lowry’s Dark Water. I’ve been wanting to re-read it ever since I read it! I wrote a review at the time of writing. You can find it here:-
and I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to interview the author. You can find that interview here:-
But why the need to re-read? Any book, not just this book. I mean we listen to a piece of music more than once. We look at a piece of art more than once. We read a poem more than once. We sometimes see films and plays more than once.So obviously we should read our books more than once. But not every book. By no means. Some books. But which books?
I’ll confess that by and large I’m generally “looking for literature” when I’m reading. It’s not a conscious decision, it’s just something within me. I don’t always find it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the myriad books I read. But what is literature I hear you ask? It is something I have thought about and I blogged about it here
Every so often a book comes along that seems to find its way right to my heart and fills me up to overflowing so that I can barely speak. Dark Water is such a book. And when I began it I had no expectations. I had no prior knowledge of the author. I was tantalised by an endorsement from Hilary Mantell on the cover. Nothing could have prepared me for the explosion of literature that rained down upon me, gloriously and mercilessly. I felt changed forever.
So I came to reread it. I’ll admit I was nervous. What if the second reading left me underwhelmed? What if I reached that horrible place that would make me wonder what I saw in it in the first instance? What if all I felt after that first reading crumbled away to nothing? Do you have to be brave to re-read a book?
Oh me of little faith! My fears dissolved after the first few sentences. Once more I became utterly immersed in the story of Hiram Carver and William Borden and once more I surrendered myself to the magnificent prose of this gifted writer. I was incredulous at the number of things I had “missed” on my first reading. It wasn’t that I didn’t read everything, dammit I read every last punctuation mark! But the full import didn’t penetrate me, probably because I was still processing what I read in a previous section. This small example describing the sun - a “buxom pumpkin” - how perfect is that? How did I pass it by the first time?
It’s 18 months since I first read the book. So I also have to bring in a re-reading of myself to the experience. Did I see William Borden more clearly with my older eyes? Do I understand Hiram Carver a little better as I continue to rot? (As Richard Mansfield accurately puts it, ‘From hour to hour we ripe and ripe - until at last, from hour to hour we rot and rot, no?’ )
Subliminally, maybe, when you know the story, or think you know the story, does your mind focus more acutely on those deeper matters nestling within the narrative? Those notions of identity and personality, of sanity and insanity, our mental and emotional freedoms. I was very aware at the time of my first reading how potent these themes are in the book and how eloquently and perceptively they were expressed. How then on the second reading would my response alter or deepen? And I wondered how any of those states can be separated or defined or are they composite, residing within all of us along a sliding scale of some sort?
I was struck by the early passages of the book on board the Orbis that Hiram’s perspective of William Borden was a classic example of first impressions and how he struggled later on to see a different Borden to the one of his initial imaginings. Poor Hiram. No matter what he did and how he behaved he still breaks my heart. First time I think I skirted around this a bit but Hiram lacks love, particularly from his mother. He remains a paradox, for his treatment of the patients in the asylum contained so much compassion and understanding, qualities which desert him in his dealings with other people. Maybe in treating his patients he is trying to treat himself. Without success ultimately.
Some characters made a deeper impression on me the second time, especially John Canacka. I always thought the patients at the Charlestown asylum seemed to have “got it right’! This business of living and understanding that we’re never free but Canacka I found even more interesting. For in spite of all he endured he remains stoic, a survivor, probably the only survivor in the whole book?
And throughout there is the extraordinary prose of Elizabeth Lowry. It has me wanting to read great swathes of the book out loud revelling in the imagery and feasting on the vowels and consonants in harmonious fusion.
As ever I could go on and on, this book still has me in its thrall and I don’t suppose I’ll ever let it go. I’d like to think I can continue to revisit it and plunder its depths to see what it will yield on future occasions. And that is what literature does. A book like this that can offer up continued richness from subsequent readings deserves to be studied and be placed on reading programs and syllabuses. I do believe that this will in time become a classic. Or it damn well should do!!
But it has reinforced and rekindled in me a strong desire to reread as many of my cherished books as I can. I need to work hard at striking a balance between the old and the new.
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