What’s a book you never finished but still think about?
Ask any book lover what’s the first thing they get asked by visitors to their home and most will answer “how many of them have you read?” Depending on how this question is asked I have two responses: some people ask this question as if they’re trying to catch you out, as if you’ve furnished your house with books to impress others; others are genuinely interested and I’m happy to tell them that any good library has plenty of choice. There are books in my library that have been there several years without being opened. Others are read the minute they come through the door. No matter how much we read and how varied our library there are books we pick up and struggle with. No matter how much we’re told about how brilliant it is, or how many prizes it’s won, we simply can’t get into it. It might be the wrong time, maybe something has happened in life that means we’re not emotionally prepared for it. Maybe it sounded interesting on the shelf in the bookshop but now you can’t build up the enthusiasm. Maybe you started it but hate the narrative voice or structure. Whatever the reason we all have famous unfinished books and here are a few of mine. I normally don’t do negative posts but I know these authors can take it. They’re bestselling authors with books beloved by the world, in fact I have books by all three on my shelves so I’m sure they won’t mind.
A novel of mind-bending imagination and scope from the author of Ghostwritten and Utopia Avenue
Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies . . .
Six interlocking lives – one amazing adventure. In a narrative that circles the globe and reaches from the 19th century to a post-apocalyptic future, Cloud Atlas erases the boundaries of time, genre and language to offer an enthralling vision of humanity’s will to power, and where it will lead us.
I know everyone thinks this is brilliant. I’ve even read other books by the author and enjoyed them. But I genuinely can’t get into this novel. My rational brain keeps telling me this is a book you need to keep reading to see its full effect and if I just give it a couple more chapters I’ll know what’s going on, but my irrational part is screaming ‘throw it out the window.’ I’ve tried on three different occasions to read this and one of them was in a holiday where I’d run out of books and this was the only one in the house. It’s in a lot of holiday cottages when you start to look and I have a theory. It’s a book people save to read on holiday and then decide life is too short and it’s better to play scrabble and stare at the rain. No matter what I do this book languishes on my shelf until the day comes when I’m ready to read it.
Some people wait their whole lives to find their soul mates. But not Holly and Gerry. Childhood sweethearts, they could finish each other’s sentences. No one could ever imagine them without each other.
When Gerry dies, Holly is devastated. But Gerry has left her a bundle of notes, one for each month of her year, each signed ‘PS, I Love You’.
As the notes are opened, the man who knows Holly better than anyone teaches her that life goes on. With some help from friends and family, Holly laughs, cries and finds that life is for living – but it helps if there’s someone watching over you.
I genuinely did throw this book out of the window and into the garden! It made me bloody furious. Gerry is dying from cancer, but somehow in the final weeks of his life he summoned up the energy to write Holly letters, buy gifts and even go to the travel agents to book a holiday with no one else knowing. In my experience, both providing care for elderly people with cancer and watching my own husband die from MS complications, people in their final weeks rarely have the energy to do all this without help and someone is always with them. I get this is a romance but it did push reality to one side to create something so sickly sweet I couldn’t bear it. One day I might be ready to read this, but a few years after a major bereavement? Absolutely not.
First came the virus. And then came the dreams . . .
A man escapes from a biological testing facility, unknowingly carrying a deadly weapon: a mutated strain of super-flu that will wipe out over 99 percent of the world’s population within a few weeks.
Those who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge – Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the ‘dark man’, the apostate of death, the warlord of the charnel house and Prince of Evil.
Now the survivors must choose between them – and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.
I had a horror reading stage in my late teens and early twenties, powering through James Herbert, Dean Koontz and most of Stephen King. I love Stephen King’s ability to tell such fantastical stories that we believe utterly and scare the wits out of us. Everyone I knew who read widely said his best book is The Stand so I gave it a go. As a reading experience it felt like wading through treacle, plodding along and taking its time to set out the post-apocalyptic world and its leaders. It just wasn’t grabbing me like his other novels and I was really struggling to stay interested. I kept looking at how many pages were ahead and thinking if life’s too short to stuff a mushroom it’s definitely too short for meandering through this. I set it aside and didn’t come back. We’re now thirty years on and I finally picked it up and read straight through. I have no idea why but I really enjoyed it, it’s not my favourite of his books but it isn’t the worst either. I have no idea why I had such an aversion to it: a teenager’s inability to concentrate, being used to more ‘sensational’ novels or that my taste has simply matured. Who knows?
Which fictional world would be the most fun to vacation in?
I have no doubt that my favourite place to vacation would be in Finland with the Moomins and their various house guests. Many people stay in the blue tower this family call home, on the edge of a lake in Finland. Built a long time ago by Moominpappa it was once lost, but after the Great Flood it is rediscovered in the perfect setting:
“At last they came to a small valley that was more beautiful than any they had seen that day. And there, in the midst of the meadow, stood a house that almost looked like a stove, very elegant and painted blue.” The Moomins and the Great Flood (1945)
It could easily take a day just to explore this strange house that’s full of the features Moominpappa didn’t have when he was a child like balconies, turrets, secret staircases all topped off with a glass knob that looks like an onion. I mustn’t forget to visit the huge chandelier where the Ancestor hides out. It’s a comfortable house with squishy furnishings, fabrics like plush and velvet, and endless shelves of books and trinkets to enjoy.
“And so the Moominhouse was rather full – a place where everyone did what they liked and seldom worried about tomorrow.”
From Finn Family Moomintroll
The best thing about Moomintroll’s family is that they accept everyone ‘just as you are’ – a promise so important it’s engraved on the inside of my wedding ring. The beauty of this family is that you can belong but you don’t have to fit in. The Moomins simply accept everyone for what and who they are. Snufkin comes and goes for long periods but there’s always a bed for him in the Moominhouse. The Hemulen prefers to wear a dress and has his magnifying glass on a chain around his neck. Even the very naughty ‘Stinky’ takes refuge behind the vacuum cleaner on one occasion!
There’s something magical about snow and the way it seems to muffle noise and cut us off from the rest of the world. Moominmamma and Pappa are always hospitable, feeding their guests well and sharing their celebrations and outings with whoever is around. I could have a gossip with the Snork Maiden or go fishing with Snufkin and Moomintroll, with a hearty picnic packed by Moominmamma. I could go nature walking with the Hemulen who could surprise me with their botanic knowledge. Their celebrations are always lit by dozens of fairy lights flashing between trees or the tiny tube-like Hattifatteners who look like miniature ghosts and feel like stinging nettles if they brush against your legs. The family are so accommodating I doubt they’d mind if I curled up in a window seat with a book watching the snow fall. There’s always a chance of seeing the Northern Lights too, from the warmth of the glass veranda, reflecting their changing colours in the lake. I have no doubt I’d come back with so many new experiences to share, incredible photographs and new friends I can visit whenever I want.
“Moomintroll’s mother and father always welcomed all their friends in the same quiet way, just adding another bed and putting another leaf in the dining-room table. And so the Moominhouse was rather full – a place where everyone did what they liked and seldom worried about tomorrow.” (Finn Family Moomintroll, 1948)
Who is the fictional character you relate to the most?
It so hard to pick one character when there are so many loves in my fictional life and so many versions of me to choose from. In children’s fiction it’s the Snork Maiden – short, plump, blonde hair and utterly in love with love. Then there are all those characters from my later childhood like Jo March and Anne of Green Gables, – the tomboys, strong willed, stubborn young women who don’t want the norm and dream bigger than those around them. Neither want to marry Laurie or Gilbert and live a small town life where they stay home and have babies. They want to be writers and both get their big adventure. Jo goes to New York, she writes stories and goes to the opera and joins a men’s debating club as well as being the governess to two small children. Imagine my disgust when I do a quiz on Facebook and find out that of all the March sisters I am most like Amy. As for Anne she goes to university, she teaches and meets different people than those back home in Avonlea. Yes she marries Gilbert in the end, but only after she chooses to come home herself.
Saoirse Ronan as Jo March in Little Women
I relate most to Louisa Clarke in Jojo Moyes’s Me Before You, with her bumbling character and bumble bee tights. She’s a working class girl whose ambitions feel out of reach and she’s so caught up in the lives of her family that she doesn’t make plans in her own. Lou loves fashion and colour which is definitely something we share. When she gets a job as carer to Will Traynor her life starts to change. Will’s family are wealthy so they’ve never moved in the same circles but an accident has left him quadriplegic and he’s back, living in his own part of the family home. Lou is a bubbly and kooky sort of girl and she’s never done this sort of work. Slowly they start to understand one another and they each teach the other person something. Will sees that Lou is under confident and doesn’t have the nerve to follow her dreams in case she fails. She thinks she’s going to open up Will’s world, he’s been depressed since his accident and doesn’t really participate in life so she starts to suggest going out more. He’s reluctant, but he sees someone who hasn’t had the experiences in life he’s had mainly down to his family having money. So he takes her to the theatre/opera, slowly opening up her world.
Emilia Clarke as Louisa in the film version of Me Before You
I relate to this because I arrived on my late husband’s doorstep with only a photograph and address. We’d written and talked on the phone for several months but never met. When we did meet we went for dinner and talked for hours. Before I left he asked me if I wanted to go to the ballet and I said yes, I’d never seen one. We saw Romeo and Juliet by the Northern Ballet and I was entranced with it. We came home late that night and ate scrambled eggs and bacon with Buck’s Fizz at midnight. Six weeks later we got married. It was crazy, but I simply didn’t want to be anywhere else. He totally opened up my world with opera, jazz, theatre and supported me to do the English degree I’d always wanted to do. I was learning so much about culture and art, but also about love. On our honeymoon week I had to learn about intermittent catheters from a man called Richard who we dubbed the King of Piss. We didn’t get out of bed much except to order Chinese food which we’d eat in bed, showing each other our favourite films and listening to music, reading the papers together. He’d travelled and I’d never had a passport. He’d spent time in New York, played rugby for London Irish, and learned both scuba diving and tall ship sailing after becoming a wheelchair user. He was adventurous and believed I could do these things too. I think this is exactly what Will gave Louisa, but she gave him a sense of family that was warm and loving. She saw him and not the disability, something he was even struggling to do for himself. She let him know he was still everything he was before his accident and the rest was just logistics.
I believe I taught Jerzy to laugh at himself. To find his situation annoying but not unbearable. I taught him that family look after each other and that true friends don’t say ‘we must get together’ but never ring. They pop in and put their own kettle on. I taught him that loving someone means you’ll fight for them, to make their life the best it can possibly be. I taught him to stop and look around once in a while. To enjoy the small things. Unfortunately for Louisa, Will decides that his life is still not how he wants to live and he opts to go abroad for assisted dying. This has been heavily criticised in disability circles for the trope of using a disabled character to teach or improve the life of an able bodied person, only to be discarded once the lesson is learned.
I also had to lose Jerzy. Not in the same way Lou lost Will but we had that discussion. Once he was unable to swallow food without aspirating and had to be PEG fed through a tube into his stomach he lost a lot of the joy he had in food, one of his great passions. He said later that he wished he’d made the choice back then, had he not wanted to stay with me. However, pneumonia and sepsis weakens the body and when it’s a repetitive cycle it’s exhausting. I was essentially doing the work of several nurses by the end with skills in PEG feeding, catheterising, suctioning the airway, chest physio and many other things. I was tired. He was exhausted. One night he was taken to hospital again and he never returned. He spent weeks in hospital and eventually chose to suspend treatment. When he died at 5am in the morning the world stopped making sense.
What Jerzy left me with was similar to what Will left Louisa with. So many experiences and a confidence I’d never had before. He had more faith in me than I had. I got a first in my English degree, then went on to get a diploma in therapeutic counselling, after five years of study. I even started a PhD – although I didn’t finish. I also got that passport and went to New York and Venice, two bucket list destinations. More recently I’ve started to write for myself and have the confidence to put my writing out into the world. Jerzy taught me more than anyone or anything else in life because he taught me how to love, to commit to someone even when the going is almost impossible, to laugh every single day and I hold what he said to me before he died very close to my heart. He’d watched his father struggle after his mother was killed in a car accident and he didn’t want me to be stuck. I’ve resolutely moved forward and kept going even when I made terrible mistakes, never forgetting and keeping him lodged firmly within my heart. Now all I need are those bumble bee tights.
Share a photo of your pet and tell us one thing that makes them uniquely them.
This is Dolly. I had to share several pictures because I’m always photographing the pets, particularly Dolly because she stays still the most. We saw her online at the RSPCA and I knew straight away. So we got in the car and called them on the way. Can we come to see Dolly? Yes, when would you like to come. Is now alright, we’re outside? Experience has taught me that when you know it’s your cat you have to go for it. She was a gregarious little cat that first day. Barely a year old and already had a litter of kittens. She came out of her enclosure and strutted up and down the walkway saying hello to all the other cats. Now she does that here. We’re a tucked away little lane of four 18th Century cottages and in the morning I hear her go out of the cat flap and visit each house in turn. Saying good morning to the neighbours as they start their day.
She’s now progressed to visiting them. Especially in summer when doors and windows are open. It’s weird enough that she sleeps in our bathroom sink, but I know the neighbour was shocked to find her sleeping in theirs when he went to the loo in the night. She pops up onto their porch and slips through the open window and sleeps with their daughter too.
She is an absolute gannet when it comes to food. We feed her twice a day, but have had to reduce it as she also eats elsewhere. Once when we returned from holiday we were greeted by an elderly man who lives just over our garden fence in another cottage. He was very anxious that we should come and collect our pregnant cat. I assured him she wasn’t pregnant, just fat and he told us he didn’t mind her being there but she’d taken over their conservatory and ‘mother’ was getting worried she might give birth. He went scurrying back to fetch her and about ten minutes later he reappeared with Dolly laid in his arms like a baby. We’ve found out since he calls her Madame La Blanc and feeds her from time to time. This is a much more flattering name than Fat Bird or Fat Girl that she gets at home. Our neighbours call her Chonk and Fatso, but if I hear them I message and say ‘stop fat shaming my cat.” They adore her and send us videos of her trying to catch pigeons with very little success.
We noticed one winter that she’d stopped sitting with us in the evening. Nights were drawing in and we had the log burner in so we were very surprised that she wasn’t warming her tummy. One Saturday night a week later the neighbours sent us a picture of her laid in front of their open fire watching Strictly. It became a habit and at the end of the show she asks to be let out again and is usually home before that week’s eliminated celebrity has finished their final dance. I wouldn’t mind but we’re watching the same thing. As soon as the series is over she’s back home again on Saturdays.
Every morning, after breakfast she comes upstairs and arranges herself on my lap in bed. My other half starts work early so he feeds them and lets Dolly upstairs when he brings my breakfast – in bed, every morning for eight years. I got a good one. She will never lie on the bed or even my left leg. It has to be the right leg or nothing at all. I’m not allowed to move. I will rub her head whether I like it or not. She will fling an iPad out of my hand if I’m not paying attention.
This is where she waits for visitors, delivery drivers, the postie. Everyone must pay the toll of a head rub before passing through.
She likes to be enclosed. I bought a wicker tray to sit on the footstool but it only took a week for Dolly to commandeer it and now it’s her bed. She will push everything out of her path to get comfy.
Every so often she has a mad burst of energy and runs up a tree or onto the garage roof. She is remarkably sprightly for a large cat, unfortunately she has a similar penchant for the Christmas tree and has to have supervised access.
Most of the time she’s my companion. She’s usually next to me when I’m reading, indoors and outdoors. When I run a bath I hear her thundering up the stairs to the bathroom and she leaps into the sink. While I read in the bath she sleeps there as if we’re two besties on a spa weekend. When it’s hot she likes me to run the tap and soak her in cool water. She’s also a fan hogger, making sure she’s at the right angle for the most benefit. She hates it when I wear slidy satin pyjamas because she slips off me in bed. She’s our little peacekeeper, trying to calm relations between our male cat Max and our new addition Minka. She is very adept at keeping the dog in check too. We don’t know what we’d do without this massive ray of sunshine in our lives. She’s such a big personality and I’m so glad we found her.
The three words I would use to describe my home are cozy, colourful and bookish. It’s never tidy, there are always piles of things to sort out and my main concern is where we can put another book case. Currently we have seven and two book trolleys. But there are piles of books everywhere. Crime and romance live on the landing, counselling and other work related books in the office. Downstairs I have a glass fronted bookcase with my special and signed editions in the living room along with a corner of unread hardbacks. In my study is a bookcase made by my father and this holds contemporary fiction, historical fiction and spooky reads. In the same room there’s a little alcove with unread proofs and my main book trolley sits underneath with everything I need for blogging. There’s always a bag of books in this room so visitors can rummage and borrow old proofs and once a month it goes to a charity that cooks Sunday lunch for the homeless. The books seem to fly from there every time.
My textile sculptures, this is Kiko and Betty.
Every so often we go to a holiday cottage and I think ‘our house could look like this’. Everything could match and it would be restful and tasteful. It could be in fifty shades of beige or grey, which seems to be the new magnolia. The truth is I love colour and pattern too much. I’m a huge fan of William Morris and Liberty print, especially my ‘strawberry thief’ desk. If we did a declutter with Stacey Solomon I think she’d have a lot to say about my textile sculptures of hares, the amount of art on the walls and the piles of books living on the floor because I’ve run out of shelf space.
My William Morris writing bureau
My book obsession has even made its way onto the decor with bookish cushions, prints and kitchenware covered in Moomins. We have framed poems on the walls and characters like Mr Tumnus.
Even the cushions have bookish credentials
The most recent thing we did was renovate the kitchen, more in keeping with the period of the house which totally gutting the room and took three months to finish. I love the colour, the old pieces of furniture that don’t match and the blue units with brass. It’s the most I’ve ever spent on anything in one go but it makes me happy every time I go in.
The new kitchen
If we did declutter what would I do with my weird old objects, most of which end up living in the study. No one else would want a candelabra that’s a monkey in a Chinese dress or the decorative bird houses, the chesterfield armchairs that belonged to my friend Nigel and the oak kitchen table we bought from Facebook for forty quid. I have an old dresser from a previous home full of china from my previous in-laws, glasses with poodles on and a Polish pottery teapot that holds eight mugs of tea and stays warm with a tea light underneath. There are prints from seeing Monkey: The Opera in New York, my photos of Venice and my rabbit mask. Snowglobes, lanterns, orchids, antique taxidermy, stones from all the beaches I’ve been to, 17th Century dough bowls, phrenology heads and vases because there are always flowers.
Piles of books awaiting a home.
I love that my home has cozy places to read, like my chaise longue (all day long) and my chair in the study usually occupied by Max. I love that my cats have places to lounge and the dog knows she can hop up on the couch. I like the soft light from lamps and candles and the way the sunset gives the landing a peachy glow. I want people to come into my house and feel comfortable, welcome and to see who we are as a family.
On the chaise longue….
I guess I’m just a maximalist at heart, greedy for colour, pattern and soft soothing light, beautiful art and quirky collectibles. Of course most importantly a lover of books.
My study, Dolly and my reading chair from my friendThe hallway camphor wood chest and William Morris chair My pink and blue living room.
What’s a song lyric that has stuck with you forever?
There’s joy not far from here, right I know there is This isn’t everything you are
These lyrics are so important to me that they still make me cry years later. This song isn’t the Snow Patrol song I played at Jerzy’s funeral. For that I chose Open Your Eyes, prompting my friend to tell everyone to bring their tissues because I was going to ‘Snow Patrol’ them. He listened to that album all the time in bed at home when he could no longer get up. Gary Lightbody writes songs that cut to the quick, somehow taking me deep into the emotions of a single moment.
When Jez died that morning at 5am it wasn’t a shock. We’d been sat there waiting, talking to him, telling him I’d be ok, urging him to let go. He was a stubborn man. Then suddenly he did. As I laid on the bed next to him and my brother lay in two chairs half asleep my huge, charming, intelligent, handsome husband was suddenly gone. I sat for a few moments and it felt like an intense roaring in my head. Then people were talking and I was responding but it was like fighting through static. The nurse gave me a hug and it must have been like holding an ironing board. I couldn’t relax into it. I don’t think the roaring stopped for months.
This song comes four years later. My memory is of putting it on full blast in the car and the singing the chorus at the top of my voice. Or on the stereo while I was in the bath. It was when I was at rock bottom. When I couldn’t see any way out of the deep well of sadness and despair. It was my way of reminding myself that I wouldn’t always feel like this. It was my inner voice coming to me through the music and reminding me that this was just part of my life, not all of it. That one day I would feel happy again. All the pieces of me that shattered that morning would come back together. Maybe not in exactly the same shape, but I would feel like me again. That moment might have been earth shattering, but it wasn’t everything I was.
If you could rewrite any book’s ending, which one would you choose?
If I could rewrite a book’s ending it would be for purely sentimental reasons. The first time I read One Day by David Nicholls I burst into tears. Genuine gulping sobs. Spoiler alert here, this line broke me.
“Then Emma Mayhew dies, and everything that she thought or felt vanishes and is gone forever.”
It’s such a simple line, but beautifully written. The change from past to present tense so we’re right there in the moment of the accident, it’s the finality too. Not just a body but that peculiar magic of thoughts, ideas, and beliefs that make up a person. That make us fall in love with a person. David Nicholls spends three quarters of the book manipulating us into falling in love with Emma and in a moment she’s snuffed out.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that this response was down to my personal experience. Probably so. Partly I probably was grieving for my husband Jerzy, he’d only died two years before. Isn’t it strange the way our memories become confused but I would have sworn the book came out before he died. I imagined I’d read it while I was at university in 2001 but since the book was published in 2009 my grief would have been raw.
It’s the futility of all the time they danced around each other, for twenty years until Dexter gets his act together and recognises how much he loves this incredible woman. He certainly takes his time. Only for their time as lovers to be cut short in a second.
For me Emma is at her happiest in Paris. She’s cut her hair. She has a lovely apartment. She writes books for children. Everything she’s hoped and worked for is hers and then Dex turns up, newly divorced and suddenly she’s on his radar. Finally he sees what’s in front of him. So I would leave Emma in Paris, meeting men who see her value and writing her books, exploring the city that’s kickstarted her dreams and done with being Dexter’s consolation prize. She will always care but knows that’s the right decision for her and her happiness. We leave her with her thoughts and feelings intact, buying flowers and meeting a man for a gallery and dinner.
Ever since I was a little girl and visited Scunthorpe Library every other Saturday morning I have had the same dream. That someone like me could one day walk into the library and borrow my book. It’s hard to overstate how much I loved the library when I was little. Unless I had a book token, we couldn’t really afford to buy books. One of my most treasured presents was from my teacher Mrs Milmer when I was about eight years old. She got married and moved away and I sent her a paperweight as a gift. She wrote me a beautiful letter of encouragement that I still have and she sent me a book token. I used it to buy a notebook to start writing. She was my favourite teacher, in fact looking back I don’t think anyone ever stretched or appreciated my imagination like she did. My best friend Zoe and I would write long stories about ghosts in attics, time travelling mammoths and anthropomorphic animals – I’ve always loved an animal in human clothing, I blame Lewis Carrol and CS Lewis. My animals were not quite as upper class as those classic creatures, mine tended to wear flat caps, argue with their wives and disappear to the pub. My parents watched Emmerdale religiously. To be able to read as voraciously and widely as I did was down to teachers who realised I could go through the whole reading scheme in an afternoon and let me roam the school library for classic novels, but mainly it was my mum who made sure that reading for pleasure was part of our upbringing.
Scunthorpe Library in the 1980s
Alongside that came a love of writing, even if it was only the journals I’ve been using since I was a similar age and got a lockable diary. I have them in hat boxes under the bed and my best friend is under strict orders to burn them when I die. I am full of book ideas, scraps and fragments of potential books live on my iPad and in notebooks but for some reason I never seem to pull together a full book. I think I lack discipline, having chronic health issues doesn’t help but it isn’t the reason I haven’t managed this dream. There are self-doubts of course. Is anything I write good enough? When I look at some of the extraordinary writers I encounter through blogging I’m in awe of their talent. Blogging has also helped me realise that a finished manuscript and the book that appears on the shelf can be two very different things. What I write at my desk will be rewritten, edited and shaped to be the best it can be with the help of editors, proofreaders, agents and all the other people who help a book along the publishing process. I know now that at 52, I really do need to get on with it if my dream of seeing my book on a library shelf is to come to fruition. Wish me luck.
Do you think we’re shaped more by our experiences or by who we are?
Me aged 4
That depends on what you mean as ‘who we are’. The question suggests a character or personality that’s innate and set in stone, clearly distinguishable from our life experiences. My life is a series of chapters, each one informed by those defining moments where my path can be clearly divided into before and after. Does my character stay exactly the same through all of that? No. Experience changes us.
I broke my back when I was eleven years old, in the last few weeks of primary school in the early 1980s. Our cottage hospital was so basic that I had to lie still on the ward for the weekend, because there was no specialist to review the x-rays till Monday. I remember looking at the ceiling as I was wheeled from room to room, wondering if I would be able to walk. Every time the bed banged against a corner or skirting board a jolt of pain went through my shoulder blade. I didn’t even get a collar or blocks to protect my spine. I broke two vertebrae and crushed a disc, but was sent home with paracetamol and told to rest. There was no physio. No rehabilitation. No spinal unit.
I just got on with it and avoided things that were painful. A couple of years ago I had an MRI of my whole spine because I’ve been suffering pain for forty years. Where my back was broken there’s a lesion in the spinal column and something called a vertebral hemangioma, a benign vascular tumour that forms from clusters of blood vessels. Then there’s scar tissue formed around the injury, caused by the body trying to protect the site but causing stiffness and nerve impingement. Our emotions are like this. Something happens to us and we try to heal. The things we do to cope are like scar tissue, lying over what happened to protect us from the pain.
Each experience teaches us. Did what happened at 11 years old affect me?Yes. I was so scared and I was alone until my parents were called. The school secretary Mrs Boot was sat nearby so I wasn’t alone, but she was no comfort. I wanted someone to tell me it was going to be okay but all the adults seemed more scared than me.
Am I resilient because of what happened then? Or does some essential ‘Hayleyness’ mean I’m able to pick myself and dust myself off? An innate optimism. I think we assume our character is whole and fixed because the alternative is scary. When Princess Diana died the outpouring of grief was a surprise, but the conspiracy theories started very quickly. It’s easier to believe there’s a secret service plot or that the Royal Family had a hand in her death, rather than accept that such a dazzling woman, a princess, could die in a car accident at only 36. It’s too mundane and ordinary. It means she was mortal. Just flesh and blood like the rest of us. It means we have to accept how random life is. That it can end in a moment.
Similarly it’s scary to accept that who we are shifts according to each new season of life. Virginia Woolf probably best captured how fractured and complex our inner worlds are and how changeable. We shift and flow, open to new possibilities and ways of being. I think I’ve learned to enjoy that ebb and flow. To discover new parts of myself all the time. To take on each new challenge and embrace the change within me. Again and again and again.
‘You cannot step into the same river twice, for it is not the same river and you are not the same man.’
The above quote, attributed to the philosopher Heraclitus, is also applicable to a favourite book. In the time you’ve been away and reading other books, the world has moved on, progressing with new ideas and opinions that bring a fresh focus to an old favourite. We also change as readers. With every new concept learned and each new experience, the filter we view the world through changes and we become open to different interpretations of a novel we know well. The book I’ve read more than any other is Jane Eyre, starting out as a childhood favourite I’ve been reading this book every few years since I was ten. My first read coincided with the BBC adaptation on Sunday evenings, starring Timothy Dalton as Mr Rochester. Back then, for me, it was a romance and a ghost story. I was spellbound by the creepy laugh in the night, the candle set to burn Rochester in his bed and the dark, vampiric ghoul that takes Jane’s wedding veil and tears it in two. Yes I was scandalised that Rochester is already married when he tries to marry Jane, but given the choice I’d rather have him than St. John Rivers who has none of the passion and feeling that Jane needs. At least she knew herself well enough to avoid that path, even before Rochester’s strange telepathic call during the fire. I remember also being horrified by the injustice of Jane’s treatment at the hands of her Aunt and then at Lowood. I also found the death of the incredibly pious Helen Burns being particularly traumatic too. In my teenage years I studied it for my English A’Levels and back then un my teenage angst I felt Jane was lacking in feeling. Why did she have to leave Rochester? I compared her with Wuthering Heights and Catherine Earnshaw, full of passion and running wild. Both characters wander the moors, but Jane is rescued from that wilderness by a man of God. I identified more with Catherine as I wandered the flat fields of Lincolnshire walking our dogs, because she was wandering with the alluring Heathcliff. They ran away from the prying eyes of Nelly and Cathy was also experiencing all those dramatic feelings we have as teenagers. I admired Cathy for never losing her feelings for Heathcliff, by comparison it felt like Jane had chosen the good and holy way, but denied herself happiness. I loved the angst of Wuthering Heights, the constant drama and passionate declarations of love, a love that couldn’t be separated by death. I didn’t understand someone who didn’t choose passion and with my church upbringing I didn’t know if Jane was being true to herself or following the religion of Lowood School and her missionary parents as I was expected to. Cathy was my rebellion and Jane felt too safe.
I next encountered the book in my late twenties at university, alongside a huge amount of context and literary theory. I was learning that I could view the book through so many different lenses and my views were changed even further. I learned so much about 19th Century history and the governess as a cultural figure, from a different perspective I studied post-colonial literature and how important it is to the understanding of Bertha Mason’s marriage with Rochester. It made me wonder about her ‘Creole’ roots and whether it was not so much her madness that was hidden but her mixed heritage. I could imagine how powerless and bewildered she must have felt to be torn from the Caribbean, declared mad and locked in the attic by her husband. I read Wide Sargasso Sea and considered how Bertha has been renamed by Rochester, much like masters would rename their slaves. She is Jane’s double – a cautionary tale of what Jane might have become if she’d stayed the little spitfire who had to be locked in the dreaded red room. Lowood’s founder Mr Brocklehurst had been determined to knock the passion out of Jane’s nature, her spirited way of answering back and lashing out to defend herself against her bullying cousin John as well as her inability to hold her tongue when criticised by her aunt. It’s a broader use of the word ‘passionate’ than we tend to use now. In feminist terms men wanted to break her spirit, to turn her into the model and saintly young woman that Helen Burns was trying to become, never daring to look up from the floor. It made me think about women who are deemed acceptable in society and those that aren’t – inconvenient women who won’t shut up, have educated themselves and want to live life on their own terms. Jane has a freedom as a governess she’s never had before, an ability to earn her own money and use her knowledge to teach. She’s without the pressure to find a husband and marry well, the main focus for an upper class woman like the visiting Blanche Ingram. Jane doesn’t have to socialise and meet men, she can choose to leave and work elsewhere if she’s unhappy. Governesses are liminal figures in fiction, not in a specific class, outside the confines of the marriage market and choosing how they spend their own money. She’s invisible and there is freedom in that invisibility.
Jane Eyre BBC Adaptation 1983
When I read the book again recently I had another insight that came from my personal experience. I’d been in an emotionally abusive relationship for a few years and found my way out. Living alone for the first time in ages, I picked up a lot of old books as comfort reads. This experience made me look at Rochester differently, especially in some scenes that had always made me uncomfortable without knowing why. Is the Jane that Rochester claims to love the true Jane? When Jane first meets Rochester, he does try to intimidate her in conversation and finds he can’t. He enjoys her intelligence and seems fascinated by her imagination, the inner world that informs her art work. However, just as young contemporary readers would red flag Heathcliff, Rochester is no stranger to manipulation. He doesn’t tell Jane who he is when they first meet on the lane, instead choosing to surprise her after dinner. He brings the awful Blanche Ingram to Thornfield Hall, just as he and Jane seem to reaching a friendship and instead of allowing Jane to retire gracefully to her room in the evening he insists she stay in the drawing room with his guests. Jane can only sit on the edge of proceedings, as someone of her status should, so why ask her to remain at all? She does hear Blanche’s opinions on governesses and the general expectation that she will become Rochester’s wife. All she wants to do is stay in her place, upstairs with Mrs Fairfax, Adele and Sophie, so his insistence on her presence when all the company ignore her seems cruel. Then there’s the strange incident of the visiting gypsy fortune teller who wishes to read the fortunes of the unmarried ladies at home. Jane is sought out by the woman who claims to know there is another single lady in the drawing room and she obliges the old woman even though she isn’t interested in seeking her fortune. To her surprise the gypsy turns out to be Rochester in disguise. This is far from normal behaviour and so outside of his usual character that the only purpose can be to solicit confessions or secrets from an unwary Jane. Although, judging by her mood he also takes the opportunity to torment Blanche Ingram too. Throughout Jane and Rochester’s interactions there is a definite hot and cold feel to their communications: he hints that she isn’t his friend so she will assert that she is; he tells her stay and leave in the same conversation; he holds her hand a fraction too long. Is the purpose to leave her unsure or unsettled? It leaves Jane unsure of his meaning and intentions, but in the position of his employee she doesn’t want to offend him. He holds all the privileges being an educated and well-travelled man of means and property, sought after in society and with the freedom to come and go as he pleases. Psychologically, the Madonna/Whore Complex is also at play here, because how Rochester describes his wife is very different from how he sees Jane. When discovered to be attempting bigamy he uses words like pure and innocent for Jane and when he thinks of his wife escaping the attic on the eve of his wedding he imagines her standing over the ‘dove’s nest’ Jane sleeps in, innocent and vulnerable. Surely, even as he asks it, he knows Jane won’t agree to be his mistress or take his promised gifts of furs and jewels?
Bringing my own experience to the book I saw that Jane leaving Thornfield was about her asserting her own boundaries. She doesn’t reject his offer of becoming his mistress just because it’s immoral and she fears other people’s opinion, it’s because she could never reconcile it with her own soul. Her wandering on the moors and almost dying of exposure is something of a rebirth, after a dark night of the soul where she wrestles with temptation she’s taken in by the Rivers family. Her subsequent friendship with St. John Rivers, who finds her on the moors, confirms her determination to be true to herself. She can see that an eligible young woman from the village has feelings for him and those feelings are reciprocated but rather than enjoy a marriage based on love, St. John needs to be sure that his future wife has the qualities he needs in a missionary’s wife. His future wife will need to share his mission, willing to suffer hardships, dangerous situations and live in poverty. He sees the qualities he needs in Jane and although he does not love her, he does make an offer of marriage because she has the moral qualities of a missionary and the ability to work hard. It’s here I could see the balanced character Jane has achieved through her life experiences. She rejects Rivers’s proposal on the basis that there’s no passion or love in their relationship. Yes, she would be a great missionary wife but she wants love too. These men are at opposite ends of the spectrum, Rochester is all passion and Rivers is all reason, Jane needs a middle ground and she won’t settle for anything less. After my reread I went to a talk about the book and I was really cross when a woman said that Jane’s return to Rochester is a betrayal of feminism. I argued it wasn’t. Jane makes the very best choice for her life and women making empowered choices is everything feminism is about. Jane is on a very different path when she returns to see Rochester after the fire, she is no longer his employee for a start and soon calls him Edward rather than Sir. She has also become an heiress in her own right, so while she was always his equal in intelligence, she is now his equal financially too. Rochester is also in a different position, with Thornfield burned to the ground he is a widow and trying to save his wife from the flames has left him blind and disfigured. Perhaps in Jane’s eyes this act of heroism redeems him slightly. His disability has left him reclusive, no longer in the highest society but that’s nothing to Jane. If they marry, it’s no longer a case of Rochester changing Jane’s position in society, she has already accomplished that on her own and he is no longer a dominant voice in the marriage. They finally come together as equals.
This is what rereading a book brings, that comfort and familiarity of a known story. Maybe there’s an element of nostalgia too. As I read the book again it’s a Russian doll experience; within this reading are all the other times I’ve read the book. Every discovery I’ve made within its pages informs me but my own changing experiences and societal changes give me a fresh eye every single time.
My favourite film adaptation of Jane Eyre from 2011
The Next Ten Books I Read Again and Again.
The Adrian Mole Series by Sue Townsend – touching, relatable, nostalgic and hilarious.
The Rutshire Chronicles by Jilly Cooper – glamorous, witty and sexy, with a rake we’d all like to reform.
All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot – cosy and nostalgic animal stories, full of humour and warmth.
The Night Circus -, a love story with dark deeds set in a magical world that’s beautifully rendered.
Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott – the ultimate comfort book with an all time favourite heroine in Jo March.
Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult – a legal battle between the contemporary world and the closed off Amish Community with teenage girl in a heart-rending situation.
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson – a unique premise, Ursula meets the 20th Century again and again.
The Shining by Stephen King – a deserted hotel, hauntings, telepathy and the realisation that the things we fear can be much closer than we think.
The Final Testimony of Raphael Ignatius Phoenix – darkly humorous, deliciously wicked and incredibly clever.
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier – a brooding widower, a naive girl, a stately home on the Cornish cliffs and a wife who won’t stay dead.
The Lotus Readers 