In Praise of Books
As anyone who knows me knows, I love to have a good read. It is fair to say that I devour books and have done since I was a young child, reading whatever books I could get hold of and naming my childhood chihuahua Tim – after Enid Blyton’s Famous Five Tim, of course ... Books have always taken me to different worlds and returned me to the world that I am in the richer for the experience of being transported to different worlds. Books have helped me to know that I’m not alone in my thoughts and feelings and so to make meaning out of life experiences at different ages and stages. Books have helped me to be human which is to be a meaning maker in the deepest sense of that phrase. And books are helping me to make meaning of the world and life experience in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. My husband Geoff would also add that they keep me quiet! 🙄
I thought that I would share some of the books that I’m reading now, or have recently read, as we share the experience of the coronavirus pandemic in different ways. And as we enter into the story and drama of Holy Week as we share our Christian journey. To enter into the drama of Holy Week, as the late Anglican priest Canon R.E.C. Browne writes in his collected papers, ‘is like looking into a mirror’ and seeing ‘what you long to be and what you are’. ‘What you long to be’ in the cries of ‘Hosanna’ with which the crowd greeted Jesus as he entered Jerusalem as we recall on Palm Sunday. ‘What you are’ in the cries of ‘crucify him’ with which the same crowd became complicit in the crucifixion as we recall on Good Friday. It is to see ‘how to set about being what you long to be’ as we contemplate last supper and foot washing, betrayal, trial and crucifixion, burial, and discovery of the empty tomb, through our observance of the Triduum, the Three Days (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday).
To enter into the drama of Holy Week, and look into the mirror that is Holy Week, is to be shown in Jesus, the wisdom of God, the word made flesh (John 1:14). It is to see in Jesus, in the first resurrection encounter on Easter Sunday morning, that evil can be overcome by good and be reminded that ‘good is not a state but a process and the process is sometimes hardly distinguishable from pain but the pain is preferred to escape from the struggle; such is the wisdom of love’ as Browne writes. In many respects, making meaning of the coronavirus pandemic is like looking into a mirror that shows us the good of which we are capable, in stories of altruism and self-giving, and the bad of which we are capable, in shocking stories of abuse of NHS staff, vulnerable people and others.
The coronavirus pandemic is a trauma experience that we are living through or existing in, in a present that is sequestered from past and future. It is too soon to write the story of the pandemic. But it is not too soon to think about the stories that are shaping our choices between good and bad as we respond to the pandemic here and now. And it is not too soon to imagine the story that we would like to be able to tell in the future about the choices that we made as we responded to the pandemic and the society that we hope will emerge from it.
Below I am going to offer mini reviews of books that I have recently read, or that I am finishing reading in the case of House of Glass. Reading the books has been like, and is like, looking into a mirror that reflects back the good and bad of which we are capable in our culture and society and that presents us with choices between good and bad both individually and collectively. So, I offer the mini reviews as we enter into the story and drama of Holy Week in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. And I offer them in the hope that they might encourage all of us to draw sustenance from a wide range of books and to share good reads to sustain each other through the pandemic – and well beyond it.
David Gange The Frayed Atlantic Edge
Across the pages of this wonderful book David Gange, a modern historian, tells the story of his experience of kayaking from Shetland to Cornwall, following the Atlantic coast of Britain. Through a sea voyage that he stages across a year, Gange traces deep human links between place, history, geography and environment. As I read this book, I dreampt about the coasts of Shetland, Orkney, and the north west highlands of Scotland that I know and love and the natural heritage that it is our collective responsibility to safeguard.
Deborah Orr Motherwell
In this unflinching memoir, the late journalist Deborah Orr explores place (Motherwell, Lanarkshire), class, mothering and the mother-daughter relationship, reflecting on her experience of being female, of being mothered and of mothering. It is one of the most heart-searing memoirs that I have ever read. And it gives one of the clearest accounts of both the way in which culture and society shape individual identity and the way in which individuals can choose to resist that influence and strive to be whole persons even as culture and society would stifle and break them.
Malena and Beata Ernman, Svante and Greta Thunberg, Our House is on Fire
Scene by scene, Malena Ernman, the mother of the teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, writes about their experience as a family of neurological disorder, mental distress, the climate emergency and Western culture and society. I laughed and cried as I read the book. And I was challenged by it – just as Ernman intended in her publication of it: ‘Hope is literally everywhere, but that hopefulness makes demands. Because without demands hope is hollow. Without demands hope is simply standing in the way of the major change that is required.’
Rebecca Solnit Recollections of my Non-Existence
In the mature writings that she gathers in this volume, the essayist Rebecca Solnit recollects her ‘self’ as she recalls the many experiences of violence and discrimination through which she was told that she did not exist, and had no right to exist, as a woman in Western culture and society in the twentieth century and the early twenty first century. Solnit examines issues surrounding gender, society and identity with verbal, emotional and intellectual precision in what is a painful yet ultimately hopeful memoir.
Hadley Freeman House of Glass
Chronicling poverty, pogroms, migration, name changes, antisemitism and the death camps of twentieth century Europe, the journalist Hadley Freeman tells the story of her grandmother’s siblings and their families. Some of those family members survived and others didn’t. In a book that Freeman researched over many years on both sides of the Atlantic, she tells of the fragility of individuals’ lives as neighbours betrayed neighbours to the death camps. And as she tells of the fragility of those lives, she examines the shards of a culture and society in which neighbours betrayed neighbours. It is a heart-breaking and timely account of the devastating effect that fear, inequality and prejudice of any form have on individuals and on society.
© 2020 Julia Bebbington Babb