I like to imagine Cinderella curled up by a dying fire, reading every word she can before she drops off to sleep. The way I see it, books would have given her the imagination to believe in her fairy godmother enough to take the magical gifts and go to the ball.
Books get me through tough times, easy times, sad and happy times. Books have been a through line in my life since early childhood. They are my number one love that isn’t a human or a pet. They’ve gotten me through illness, heartbreak, anxiety and boredom. Books broaden my mind and expose me to ideas that soothe my soul. I’d like to think that lonely Cinderella had the same consolation.
January is always a big reading month for me. I just ignore the cold weather and keep turning the page. But this past week has been particularly rough. I think however you voted, the speed with which life is about to change in the US is startling.
Coping through reading has been especially effective over the last couple of months. I shut the world out and sink into someone else’s fantastically detailed dream committed to paper. (It has to be paper. I’ve given up on Kindle. I don’t remember anything I read on Kindle.)
I’ve probably read 20 books in the last couple of months, but only a couple have really stood out. One of the books I read changed the way I see the world, so I thought I’d share it with you.
It’s Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Many of you may have already read it, as it is a very famous book, and it’s been out a while. In fact, a lot of people think that Never Let Me Go (NLMG) is the book that won Ishiguro the Nobel Prize in 2017.
Ishiguro’s prose is so direct and spare in NLMG that the reader barely knows that anything is happening. At first, you just think you are reading the thoughts and memories of a not especially special girl who went to a special boarding school in the UK. I found it just readable enough to keep going.
Yet ever so slowly, I began to sense that there was something very odd about the school and the kids. The prose in the book is deceptively simple. It’s the work of a complete master—a master who uses clarity and simplicity to change the reader from one way to another.
I don’t want to tell you any more if you’ve never read NLMG. It’s a slim book, and it’s best to go into blind. But I will tell you this: I was sobbing by the end. Sobbing at 2:30 AM, not caring that I’d never sleep that night. I was sad, for sure, but I also felt like my ideas of what it means to be human were bigger than they’d ever been. I still feel like it made me a slightly different and better person.
I generally avoid sad books, but not if they make me more fully understand my own humanity and that of others. I also avoid sci-fi books. They just aren’t my thing. But NLMG is set in the UK of the recent past, and it’s really not about sci-fi. It’s about the person reading the book and how they experience being alive on this beautiful, difficult planet.
Never Let Me Go tore me up, but made me stronger. It helped make me feel a bit more equal to navigate the changes that are coming. Strangely enough, it also made me happier, because it made me feel my humanity and the humanity of others more keenly. It changed me as surely as the fairy godmother changed Cinderella.
Kate Wolford was the publisher and editor of The Fairy Tale Magazine for many years. She’s now enjoying being Resident Fairy Godmother.
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