Louise - this is simply stunning writing. How much you have done in so few words...
There is that concentration of childhood experience that gives me the same sensory pleasure I get from C S Lewis and Laurie Lee ('Illicitly, at night, I would snake a desk lamp into my wardrobe, closing the door so only a chink of light betrayed me and cur…
Louise - this is simply stunning writing. How much you have done in so few words...
There is that concentration of childhood experience that gives me the same sensory pleasure I get from C S Lewis and Laurie Lee ('Illicitly, at night, I would snake a desk lamp into my wardrobe, closing the door so only a chink of light betrayed me and curl up beneath the dress hems and shirt tails to scuttle between pages.')
But then you also manage to say something deeply affecting about your adult experience, right now. Particular to you, but true (in that way of good writing) to something so many of us experience - when we are with a friend or partner whose efforts or interests somehow (often without any intent on their part) crowd out or diminish our own.
And then that very last line which gave me the same mix of disquiet and hope I get from Dickinson.
Wow. It makes me want to have a long writer and reader conversation with you. But as we aren't in the same town, I wonder if you can say a little more here in comments about that small collection on your bedside table - of what composed?
I'm also moved by your piece not only by its beauty but by the synchronicity of it: After reading constantly, deeply, widely my whole live I have found myself in a paradox in this publication year - what made me want to become a writer (that deep, sensual flow got from reading) has retreated from me in a long season where I've often had to respond at short notice to requests to blurb books, give talks, travel to events. It's all been a privilege...and yet I no longer feel myself. On Friday night and all day Saturday I read whole Hardy's Return of the Native which somehow (how?) I'd never read. It was mind-blowing. To regain my whole concentration in the act of reading about imaginary people from hundreds of years ago as if they were absolutely real and their situation urgent to me. And yesterday I began rereading a biography of Hardy first read in my twenties, but different now that I've been published and reviewed both well and badly myself...
All this a long-winded way of saying: I, too, have lost the habit of reading often and deeply and intend in this coming year to place it at the soul and centre of any free time I have.
I'd love so much to know whether reading returns to you and how. And what that is. Using this thread for that? I get notifications on any new comments, however deeply nested in the main thread those be...
Thank you for this truly fine piece of writing. Your link to it as follows:
Thank you so much Tanya for your amazing words and for being so generous with your own story. So interesting to hear that a version of this has also happened to you and that I too have found my lack of reading has caused an uneasy sense of straying from, and not feeling, myself.
My husband read my short piece and suggested I make a private reading den just for me away from him! His books are hardback tomes on wars and great leaders, a religious user of the bookmark, he treats his books with reverence, read, displayed and every word remembered. Mine are well-thumbed paperbacks, pages turned down and spines cracked - my act of reading more visceral and interactive. After being read my memory is of feelings, colours and landscapes, and of the time and place where I first immersed myself- with names, dates and facts, which my husband asks for, often forgotten. I think the difference and my comparison of this has shamed me into non-reading, which is completely unintentional on his part. In contrast to him I feel a careless reader but as you say it is the ‘act of reading about imaginary people from hundreds of years ago as if they were absolutely real and their situation urgent to me’ that is magical for me. It reminds me of a book I read last year, James Meek - To Calais, in Ordinary Time.
As for my reading pile, I should say that The Cure for Sleep has been on it for some time, though I finished it today. I think I knew it would require something deep and difficult from me, which was why I simultaneously bought it and avoided it, only dipping in and out when I felt I could. This platform together with your book has stirred in me a need for bravery and first steps, your profound and unwavering honesty, a liberation for me in so many ways, thank you.
Also on my pile is David Mitchell’s Utopia, Phillippe Sand’s The Ratline and Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend (given by a friend) and a special one - Emma Harding’s Friedrichstrasse 19 – written by an old school friend who I am so very proud of, a phenomenal knowledge and quiet talent whose debut novel I hope to read next.
I'm aware that the noise and distraction of the outside world also plays a part in my lack of reading and your safe space here to write has given me an opportunity to explore this and gently find my way back, perhaps in a new way? A recalibration of the second half of my life that is needed before I can return to reading with a new sense of self and desire. I am willing myself to crack a new spine in the coming days, perhaps a little braver in heart and inching further down the path to a new hope and desire for my future…I’ll let you know how I get on xx
Louise - how strange. I was sure I'd replied to this...but see now that I've instead been in ongoing conversation with you/your words in my thoughts! Our exchange here really has moved me. I read your piece, my response, your reply to my husband as an example of what wonderful things are happening on here. And it led to another great conversation between he and I about reading. Thank you.
Please do keep writing for us here, and I am fascinated to read whatever you want to share about your 'recalibration'.
Since we last exchanged words here I've gone on from Return of the Native to Hardy's biography (just finished) and now I've cracked open a much-sellotaped copy of Tess of the D'Urbervilles that I've had since university but never read because of how often tutors and classmates called me her, on account of my rural accent. I see now, so late, how I turned away from my rural heritage into a study of the modernists simply because I resented being characterized by others. But lost a lot in so doing.
It's lovely to feel there's a group of us all recalibrating in our different ways. xx
Louise, I hope you can find your way back. All those worlds are waiting for you, as is your new world. I barely read for years when my kids were little, and now I'm back, it's like getting to know my self again. Have fun x
Louise - this is simply stunning writing. How much you have done in so few words...
There is that concentration of childhood experience that gives me the same sensory pleasure I get from C S Lewis and Laurie Lee ('Illicitly, at night, I would snake a desk lamp into my wardrobe, closing the door so only a chink of light betrayed me and curl up beneath the dress hems and shirt tails to scuttle between pages.')
But then you also manage to say something deeply affecting about your adult experience, right now. Particular to you, but true (in that way of good writing) to something so many of us experience - when we are with a friend or partner whose efforts or interests somehow (often without any intent on their part) crowd out or diminish our own.
And then that very last line which gave me the same mix of disquiet and hope I get from Dickinson.
Wow. It makes me want to have a long writer and reader conversation with you. But as we aren't in the same town, I wonder if you can say a little more here in comments about that small collection on your bedside table - of what composed?
I'm also moved by your piece not only by its beauty but by the synchronicity of it: After reading constantly, deeply, widely my whole live I have found myself in a paradox in this publication year - what made me want to become a writer (that deep, sensual flow got from reading) has retreated from me in a long season where I've often had to respond at short notice to requests to blurb books, give talks, travel to events. It's all been a privilege...and yet I no longer feel myself. On Friday night and all day Saturday I read whole Hardy's Return of the Native which somehow (how?) I'd never read. It was mind-blowing. To regain my whole concentration in the act of reading about imaginary people from hundreds of years ago as if they were absolutely real and their situation urgent to me. And yesterday I began rereading a biography of Hardy first read in my twenties, but different now that I've been published and reviewed both well and badly myself...
All this a long-winded way of saying: I, too, have lost the habit of reading often and deeply and intend in this coming year to place it at the soul and centre of any free time I have.
I'd love so much to know whether reading returns to you and how. And what that is. Using this thread for that? I get notifications on any new comments, however deeply nested in the main thread those be...
Thank you for this truly fine piece of writing. Your link to it as follows:
https://thecureforsleep.com/november-issue-reading/#louiseratcliffe
Thank you so much Tanya for your amazing words and for being so generous with your own story. So interesting to hear that a version of this has also happened to you and that I too have found my lack of reading has caused an uneasy sense of straying from, and not feeling, myself.
My husband read my short piece and suggested I make a private reading den just for me away from him! His books are hardback tomes on wars and great leaders, a religious user of the bookmark, he treats his books with reverence, read, displayed and every word remembered. Mine are well-thumbed paperbacks, pages turned down and spines cracked - my act of reading more visceral and interactive. After being read my memory is of feelings, colours and landscapes, and of the time and place where I first immersed myself- with names, dates and facts, which my husband asks for, often forgotten. I think the difference and my comparison of this has shamed me into non-reading, which is completely unintentional on his part. In contrast to him I feel a careless reader but as you say it is the ‘act of reading about imaginary people from hundreds of years ago as if they were absolutely real and their situation urgent to me’ that is magical for me. It reminds me of a book I read last year, James Meek - To Calais, in Ordinary Time.
As for my reading pile, I should say that The Cure for Sleep has been on it for some time, though I finished it today. I think I knew it would require something deep and difficult from me, which was why I simultaneously bought it and avoided it, only dipping in and out when I felt I could. This platform together with your book has stirred in me a need for bravery and first steps, your profound and unwavering honesty, a liberation for me in so many ways, thank you.
Also on my pile is David Mitchell’s Utopia, Phillippe Sand’s The Ratline and Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend (given by a friend) and a special one - Emma Harding’s Friedrichstrasse 19 – written by an old school friend who I am so very proud of, a phenomenal knowledge and quiet talent whose debut novel I hope to read next.
I'm aware that the noise and distraction of the outside world also plays a part in my lack of reading and your safe space here to write has given me an opportunity to explore this and gently find my way back, perhaps in a new way? A recalibration of the second half of my life that is needed before I can return to reading with a new sense of self and desire. I am willing myself to crack a new spine in the coming days, perhaps a little braver in heart and inching further down the path to a new hope and desire for my future…I’ll let you know how I get on xx
Louise - how strange. I was sure I'd replied to this...but see now that I've instead been in ongoing conversation with you/your words in my thoughts! Our exchange here really has moved me. I read your piece, my response, your reply to my husband as an example of what wonderful things are happening on here. And it led to another great conversation between he and I about reading. Thank you.
Please do keep writing for us here, and I am fascinated to read whatever you want to share about your 'recalibration'.
Since we last exchanged words here I've gone on from Return of the Native to Hardy's biography (just finished) and now I've cracked open a much-sellotaped copy of Tess of the D'Urbervilles that I've had since university but never read because of how often tutors and classmates called me her, on account of my rural accent. I see now, so late, how I turned away from my rural heritage into a study of the modernists simply because I resented being characterized by others. But lost a lot in so doing.
It's lovely to feel there's a group of us all recalibrating in our different ways. xx
Louise, I hope you can find your way back. All those worlds are waiting for you, as is your new world. I barely read for years when my kids were little, and now I'm back, it's like getting to know my self again. Have fun x
Thank you Amelia! I think I'm slowly getting there and you are so right, it does feel like I'm getting to know myself again!