What book saved your life?
I asked myself that question recently and came up with a sharp retort: which of the many times? Fiction, non-fiction or poetry?
There were books that saved my life as a kid, a young adult, a 20-, 30-, 40- and 50-something. There were books I needed and books I didn't know I needed but that, in fact, I needed desperately. There were books thrust on me that I ignored for the longest time, then picked up and was transported. And there are books that I obsessively press into people's hands, insisting that this book could also change or enrich their lives.
By now, some books feel as much a part of me as my own arms and legs. Here are three fictional works that I find myself thinking of very often.
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis: The accounts of the Pevensie children sustained me through many a long and lonely weekend afternoon. I was never a particularly social child. I was extremely shy, yet I craved the company of others. The company I gained through these books (which I read over and over again) showed me, I think, that your friends can come in unexpected sizes (and species); and that popularity is best won through good deeds, not clothes or ability in sports. I think these books also revealed for me that magic can be anywhere and strike at any time. And Turkish delight is delicious!
A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean: The beauty of this book stuns me everytime I flip the covers open. As a young adult, I needed this book to show me that my WASP family was also complicated and that one can love a difficult family member without being able to save them. I had the huge good fortune of meeting the author in his Hyde Park apartment not long before he died. It was Chicago winter, grey and bitter. But MacLean kept his apartment a steamy 82 degrees. Family pictures from Montana (the setting of the book and his home) hung on the walls. It was then I realized that fiction can also be a kind of memoir, an expiation of love and grief and all of the stories we collect over a well-lived life.
The Girl with all the Gifts by M.R. Carey: By now, Carey should be giving me a cut of the royalties (and movie proceeds). This was a book a friend of a friend recommended and there it sat on my dining room table for many weeks. I decided to pick it up and by 5 am the next morning I was ready to start from page one again. Carey rewrites the rules of monsters and dystopia and heroes and the apocalypse all in a page-turning frenzy. And Melanie -- curious, loving, ferocious, indomitable Melanie -- is a character for the ages. Carey caught something spectacular in these pages, a way of thinking about the end of times being a hard, tenacious beginning.
Happy reading!