Stupid Slate article messing with my head (because I can admit this much: I'm defensive first because I think she's totally uninformed and wrong, but second because I fear there's some grain of truth beneath the total wrongness).
So I picked up a grownup book a friend was vociferously recommending, and which, as a Pulitzer-winner, I should have read a while back, anyway: Olive Kitteridge.
I am shocked at how much I'm loving this book, especially since it's structured as a bunch of short stories, a format I rarely respond to as readily as I do to the full-blown-novel thing. I'm totally absorbed. I even turned off the Real Housewives to get back to it last night.
I know. Whoa.
I think it's a rare feeling no matter how much you read, but such a special one, not least because I associate it more with childhood than I do with my current life: the sense that you don't want to leave a book, and its world, behind.
For me, at least, I may not want any good book to end, per se, but I usually want to know what happens. I want to learn how the characters change, where the narrative goes, whether the protagonist finds the killer, or gets the girl, or learns to deal with her demons...or totally implodes. I want to see how the content of the book mattered.
But sometimes, the idea of learning those "and then what?" answers is less important than just being allowed to continue inhabiting the world the book creates. For me, the most obvious example of this is the Lord of the Rings books (all-time favorites ever since I first read The Hobbit sometime before the age of 10).
Yes, sure, I want to see if Frodo finishes his quest, or whether Boromir ever accepts his destiny. But I wouldn't care if I never saw any of that if it meant I got to wander around inside that world for longer. Knowing what happens means I have to say goodbye to Middle-Earth, and the part of me that wants to know the end is way less important than the part that wants to prolong my stay there.
Some books just pull you in so intensely that finishing them is, more than anything, sad. Which is beautiful, but in that rather grim, awful, "do we really need this sting to appreciate the beauty? REALLY?" way.
Some time tonight I'll have to leave Olive, and Crosby, Maine, and all the ebbs and flows of the world Strout captured SO perfectly behind.
I'm happy I got to visit for a while...
...but I'm very sad to have to go.
See? It makes me cry every time I finish a book I really loved reading. Glad you enjoyed getting to know Olive. Now read The Screaming Staircase - it's a fun middlegrade novel and written so well by Jonathan Stroud.
ReplyDeleteWell next up is "The Goldfinch," because I'm behind the times, but I'll add it to the list.
ReplyDeleteThanks for introducing me to Olive. She would probably hate me, but that's part of her charm. ;)
I *do* know the feeling, though I must confess that as I get older (and probably not wiser) it is rarer than in my childhood when the characters of all good books became my friends, and parting was such sweet sorrow.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Mirka--I think when I was a kid I fell into most of my books, head-first. Nowadays, it's just not that common to feel that sort of visceral hunger to be back inside a book's world. When I have it, I try to cherish it!
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