certainly all very interesting.
She started reading in earnest.
At first she was inhibited by not knowing how private reading was. She kept an eye on all the things the others read and secretly read them too.
Mr Botham read a dirty sheath of smudged grey paper that came and went every day. It was never called the same thing twice. There were pictures of naked women in it; and on the back pages men but not women could be bought and sold: they cost lots of money. In the centre pages someone called Stan spoke of the battle between cancer and his wife Mildred. Cancer won in the end, but heroism such as Stan and Mildred's knows no defeat. It was all about other places, some of them (perhaps) not too far away. It told of atrocious disparities of fortune, of deaths, cataclysms, jackpots. And it was very hard to read, because the words could never come to an agreement about the size or shape they wanted to be. Mrs Botham read pamphlets sent to her by Al Anon, of whom she always spoke most warmly. The pamphlets were all about alcoholics and sounded just like Mrs Botham did. They had scales and graphs of what alcoholics got up to: they drank alone, they lied and stole things, they trembled and had visions of mice and shellfish. Then they forgot everything. Then they died. But if you put your faith in A.A. and God, it would all turn out right in the end.
Gavin spent a lot of time gazing disdainfully through his slippery magazines, but he had some other things in a cupboard in his room which he would occasionally consult or sort through. They were books, and books turned out to be where language was kept. Some were from school; others were acquired for a night course that Gavin had got too disheartened to complete; still others had been pressed on him by a friend of his, a poet, a dreamer. Mary was rather dashed to discover that Gavin had gone to school for eleven years and yet even now considered himself to be lamentably ill-educated. She never knew there was so much to know. Gavin said she could help herself to his books, and so, slackly prompted by his nods and scowls, Mary got started straight away.
Books were difficult. She read The Major Tragedies of William Shakespeare. It was about four men made up of power, mellifluousness and hysteria; they lived in big bare places that frightened them into speech; they were all cleverly murdered by women, who used an onion, a riddle, a handkerchief and a button. She read A Dickens Omnibus. It was about parts of London she had not yet seen. In each story a nice young man and a nice young woman weaved through a gallery of grimacing villains, deformed wags and rigid patriarchs until, after an illness or a separation or a long sea-voyage, they came together again and lived happily ever after. She read Rhyme and Reason: An Introduction to English Poetry. It was about an elongated world of elusive vividness and symmetry; there was a layer, a casing on it that she found nowhere else and knew she would never fully penetrate; the words marched to the end of their rank, sounded a chime, darted back again, and marched forward cheerfully, with renewed zest, completely reconciled to whatever it was that determined their role. She read The Jane Austen Gift-Pack. The six stories it contained spoke more directly to her than anything else had done. The same thing happened in every book: the girl liked a bad man who seemed good, then liked a good man who had seemed bad, whom she duly married. What was wrong with the bad men who seemed good? They were unmanly, and lacked candour, and, in at least two clear instances, fucked other people. Mary re-read one of these stories and was anxious that things would turn out the same way as they had before. They did, and she found this very comforting. She read The Rainbow, What Maisie Knew, and two fat shiny works about natural disaster and group jeopardy ... At one point it occurred to her that books weren't about other places: they were about other times, the past
She started reading in earnest.
At first she was inhibited by not knowing how private reading was. She kept an eye on all the things the others read and secretly read them too.
Mr Botham read a dirty sheath of smudged grey paper that came and went every day. It was never called the same thing twice. There were pictures of naked women in it; and on the back pages men but not women could be bought and sold: they cost lots of money. In the centre pages someone called Stan spoke of the battle between cancer and his wife Mildred. Cancer won in the end, but heroism such as Stan and Mildred's knows no defeat. It was all about other places, some of them (perhaps) not too far away. It told of atrocious disparities of fortune, of deaths, cataclysms, jackpots. And it was very hard to read, because the words could never come to an agreement about the size or shape they wanted to be. Mrs Botham read pamphlets sent to her by Al Anon, of whom she always spoke most warmly. The pamphlets were all about alcoholics and sounded just like Mrs Botham did. They had scales and graphs of what alcoholics got up to: they drank alone, they lied and stole things, they trembled and had visions of mice and shellfish. Then they forgot everything. Then they died. But if you put your faith in A.A. and God, it would all turn out right in the end.
Gavin spent a lot of time gazing disdainfully through his slippery magazines, but he had some other things in a cupboard in his room which he would occasionally consult or sort through. They were books, and books turned out to be where language was kept. Some were from school; others were acquired for a night course that Gavin had got too disheartened to complete; still others had been pressed on him by a friend of his, a poet, a dreamer. Mary was rather dashed to discover that Gavin had gone to school for eleven years and yet even now considered himself to be lamentably ill-educated. She never knew there was so much to know. Gavin said she could help herself to his books, and so, slackly prompted by his nods and scowls, Mary got started straight away.
Books were difficult. She read The Major Tragedies of William Shakespeare. It was about four men made up of power, mellifluousness and hysteria; they lived in big bare places that frightened them into speech; they were all cleverly murdered by women, who used an onion, a riddle, a handkerchief and a button. She read A Dickens Omnibus. It was about parts of London she had not yet seen. In each story a nice young man and a nice young woman weaved through a gallery of grimacing villains, deformed wags and rigid patriarchs until, after an illness or a separation or a long sea-voyage, they came together again and lived happily ever after. She read Rhyme and Reason: An Introduction to English Poetry. It was about an elongated world of elusive vividness and symmetry; there was a layer, a casing on it that she found nowhere else and knew she would never fully penetrate; the words marched to the end of their rank, sounded a chime, darted back again, and marched forward cheerfully, with renewed zest, completely reconciled to whatever it was that determined their role. She read The Jane Austen Gift-Pack. The six stories it contained spoke more directly to her than anything else had done. The same thing happened in every book: the girl liked a bad man who seemed good, then liked a good man who had seemed bad, whom she duly married. What was wrong with the bad men who seemed good? They were unmanly, and lacked candour, and, in at least two clear instances, fucked other people. Mary re-read one of these stories and was anxious that things would turn out the same way as they had before. They did, and she found this very comforting. She read The Rainbow, What Maisie Knew, and two fat shiny works about natural disaster and group jeopardy ... At one point it occurred to her that books weren't about other places: they were about other times, the past
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