Being ill is boring
Being ill is boring, but great books make life better. I hadn’t been feeling great for a while, but I did what many people do when they’re worried about their health: nothing. When I finally went to the doctor, I was despatched to the hospital and operated on.
Eight months later and my life has changed. Well, for the moment at least. I am no longer tearing off to school and shoving food in my mouth like a compulsive gambler filling a slot machine with coins. Instead, I’m at home, and life is much quieter.
General hospital
I’ve had several operations since my first one, but there have been some positive changes from this uncertain time. It feels like a reset; I’ve had to default to factory settings and start some things from a different perspective.
For one thing, I’ve realised that I need to take better care of myself. I ignored the neon signs and massive warnings my body was giving me.
Books heal your mind
While I was incapacitated on the sofa, I was able to indulge in one of my favourite pastimes: reading. My preferred genres are crime fiction and horror. I also love stories set in the domestic sphere which are mostly written by women. Crime and horror have many female authors too: good ones. Often they are not as celebrated as enthusiastically as their male counterparts, but that is a topic for another blog.
Reading to distract from pain
When I was on high doses of medication, I could barely move let alone think. Reading became an essential ritual of self-care. It allowed me to explore worlds and inhabit other lives. Reading helped me imagine a time when I would be well again.
Of the books I read, several stand out. Books that, despite my discomfort, I consumed within two days. One occupied me so much that I read until dawn.
Girl A
In January while floating in codeine-cushioned comfort, I read Girl A in twenty-four hours. As I was physically restricted on the sofa, I read about a family trapped by a father obsessed with his own needs to the detriment of his terrified children. Told in flashback, the story details the survival and brutal aftermath of siblings who escape their abusive home.
All the children are damaged in different ways, and they all develop different coping mechanisms for their trauma. I found it strangely comforting and full of melancholy.
Educated
Educated explores themes of endurance, redemption, and hope. A young girl lives in a state of constant anxiety; her End-of-Days-survivalist father directs his family in a grim drama of trauma, pain, and neglect. Both these books feature abusive fathers who use their physical strength and religious fervor to dominate and control their families. Their thwarted ambitions are paid for by their innocent children.
Girl A is fictitious, but it was inspired by real-life accounts of children held captive by their parents. In contrast, Educated is a memoir that is truly horrific, yet hopeful. I found both these books to be comforting when I was at my worst.
My confinement was temporary whereas these children had spent years living under tyrannical rule. It is easy to fall into self-pity when you are ill, and these two stories helped me get some perspective. I had my loving family who made every effort to comfort, help and support me.
Inch Levels
After Educated, I tackled Inch Levels. The framing device for this novel involves a young man with terminal cancer lying in a hospital bed which resonated with me. Visited by his mother, sister and brother-in-law the past slowly seeps into the present, and the toxicity of poor communication and family secrets is devastating.
A change of direction
By the middle of January, I decided I needed something lighter to divert me. Books that would comfort, intrigue, excite and scare me. I love ghost stories and horror; they both deal with controlled terror. While I was feeling scared of the world, and my own health, these books offered a distraction. They helped me adjust to my new, but hopefully, temporary existence.
The Book Club
The Book Club enveloped me like a warm blanket; I loved the cosy-crime claustrophobia of it. I have always enjoyed living in cities for the anonymity they provide. You can enjoy community without knowing everything about those on your doorstep. Mary Alice Monroe captures the dynamics of a close-knit community and the intricacies of female friendship well.
The Sundown Motel
The Sundown Motel blends two genres I am enthralled by: ghost stories and true crime. Simone St James creates an uneasy atmosphere when she abandons her protagonist, Carly Kirk, to a small town in upstate New York. She works at the reception desk at a rundown motel while trying to uncover what happened to her aunt who disappeared forty years previously.
The tension arises from the isolation and anger of some of the inhabitants of the hotel – not all of whom are alive. If you loved Pyscho and The Shining this evokes the same sense of unease, but the girl in peril is replaced with a fearless woman who won’t stop until she finds the truth. I love how the author discards the tired girl-in-terror trope and instead gives her main character agency.
The Broken Girls
After The Sundown Motel, I read another thriller by Simone St James: The Broken Girls. The story employs a time-shift element that I adore, and this time we switch between the 1950s, the 1980s, and the present day. Fiona, whose older sister was murdered at the site of an abandoned girls’ school, is dismayed to find the site is under renovation.
Who would want to bring this place back to life? Why was the school closed in the 1950s and what really happened to Fiona’s sister? This was intriguing and pacy featuring another strong, complicated woman. There are some male authors who would benefit from reading heroines like Fiona and Carly.
No Matter What
I have some friends who are in the process of growing their family. They loaned me this book to help me better understand the needs their children will have. No Matter What is a searing memoir by an adoptive mother and all the love, pain, uncertainty, turmoil, and contentment this brings for the parents and their children.
Other books I would recommend include, The Sanatorium set in the Swiss Alps which was grim and compelling; The Return: friends reunited in an isolated hotel; The Midnight Library which lived up to all the hype, and Where The Crawdads Sing which made one hospital stay much more bearable.
The Last House on Needless Street
Finally, a best-seller that I could not shake for weeks. I have an interest, some might say an unhealthy one bordering on obsession, in cats. Everything about them fills me with admiration: their utter disdain, grace, and independence among their other mystical associations. So, reading The House on Needless Street felt indulgent.
Here is a paraphrase of the blurb: This story involves murder, abduction, and a man called Ted who lives with his daughter Lauren and his cat Olivia. All of these things are true. And yet some of them are lies. I have not read a book this tightly plotted and deceptive in a very long time. Catriona Ward – you are a master storyteller.
My life has been weird, isolating, consoling, invigorating and unusual over the last year. All I know is, that great books make life better. And to all the lovely people who have been such a support. Thank you.