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| Illustration by: MissABeet |
Why do we like stories? It might be because we want to escape ourselves- temporarily live a wild and riotous life, with plenty of passion and reckless romance. Or it could be the chance to hide for a while in a shadowy place, the ‘other’ where we vicariously slip into netherworlds and darkness- if only for a while.
It could be. But sometimes we are just searching for ourselves in a story. Maybe that’s why we often pick books with characters of roughly the same type and age as ourselves. The book can be a mirror, reflecting back a version of ourselves and reminding us that we are not alone. If we are young, it is often a ‘rite of passage’ bildungsroman close up, complete with angst, cringe and acne. If we are older it can be uncomfortably retrospective…or thrillingly real.
So, here are some books to make anyone from twelve to twenty feel the world is not a lonely place, and to make their elders reflect, wince, cringe and smile:
'Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging' by Louise Rennison. How to manage when your family are insane and so is your cat, your best friend is a traitor, the boy you like appears to be engaged to someone else, and the boy you are with wants to do nothing but salivery snogging. Ugh. At least some of that has happened to all of us, I’m sure. Watch the film too.
Next up is a novel narrated by a boy. It makes no difference though, because ‘The Perks of Being a WallFlower’ by Stephen Chbosky describes perfectly the feeling of being just a little bit—well—different. And it describes perfectly the happiness of finding people a little bit more like you and feeling a little bit more accepted. There is also a healthy dose of (mostly) unrequited love and sibling love/hate. There is a sting in the tail to this novel, and when it comes, you think—ah yes, I get it now!
On a much lighter note: ‘The Diary of a Chav’ by Grace Dent. No Booker prize winner this, but I have a soft spot for a book that lets us know that there is more than one kind of girl with a brain, and books and education are not just the privileges of the posh and privately educated. It’s a book for a teenager, but it made me laugh too.
More literary- ‘I Capture The Castle’ by Dodie Smith is about being young, love stricken and unconventional. It’s about being forced to make moral choices against your heart—and the ending is rather heart rending. For anyone who had unconventional ‘bohemian’ parenting. You’ll get this.
‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ is written as if through the eyes of a child- although it is the older narrator who ultimately retells the tale of Boo Radley and Tom Robinson. Its themes might be small town prejudice and racism, but its genius is in capturing the blank sheet of childhood, when you just don’t know what all the fuss is about. You’ll remember it well.
Similarly, ‘The Secret Life of Bees’ seems to be about segregation and prejudice. And it is. But it’s also about finding your identity and your place in life- very far from where you started. Lily Melissa Owens also has a terrible secret, and so it is also about dealing with terrible self-knowledge and forgiving yourself.
Anyone who has ever been bullied by a bunch of little girls will love or loathe the first part of ‘Cat’s Eye’ by Margaret Atwood. This first part is so chilling in its depiction of innocent malice that it can be hard to read, and the second part is rather sad in the way that everything in Elaine’s life is coloured by these encounters—including her art. Her new art collection is a ‘retrospective’ and that is exactly what this is.
Lastly, a new book—nominated for the Booker prize and beautifully capturing the feeling of ‘oddness’ in childhood and the strong feelings we have in youth: 'We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves' by Karen Joy Fowler. It is not a direct mirror, however, since there are not all that many of us who can say, ‘yes, I remember how I felt when I realised it was odd that my sister was a . . .’ But I won’t spoil the fun. Suffice to say, it does make you think about what it means to be human. Who or what is it that stares back at us from that mirror? To paraphrase from the novel, it is the ‘being’ part of ‘human being’ that is the most important bit.
These books—and so many others— show us ourselves, to a greater or lesser extent. We read them and think ‘yes, I’ve thought that too…’ or ‘that’s exactly how I felt..’ or ‘ I’ve done just that too.’ There is a bit of us in all these novels that reflect upon childhood, or teenage years. We stare down into their depths and search for our reflections so that we know we are not alone out there.
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