There Are Books

There are many books that I love as if they were my family. I smile when I think of them, I like to keep them nearby, I touch them lovingly, and sometimes I squeeze them in a hug.

Many of these are classics from childhood that I still reread, like A Wrinkle in Time and Anne of Green Gables, or the books my school librarian started pressing on me once we became friends, like Jane Eyre, Little Women, and Pride and Prejudice. These books were sort of like big sisters to me--they made me want to be better or smarter or more brave and capable, and they were the books that pulled me along the path that ended up in writing seminars in college, and with a B.A. in "English Writing: Fiction" and dreams of time spent in the Iowa writers' colony.

Despite the hours of scribbling and daydreams, I never published any fiction, and I stopped writing it soon after college when rent and car insurance became more pressing realities. My dreams of being a novelist weren't truly put to rest, though, until I read A.S. Byatt's Possession.

Up until the time I read Possession, I had always read for pleasure thinking, "I could do this. I can write at least this well." (Before you laugh at my hubris, though, please note that I wasn't entirely off my rocker--these delusions of grandeur never approached things I read for school, like Shakespeare or Conrad. I thought my writing writing was competent compared to a lot of the stuff I read for fun. Okay? Are we clear? I was deluded, but not insane.)

Anyway, Posession was the first modern book I read that blew me away. I knew as I read that I couldn't hold a candle to Byatt's talent, and I was humbled and amazed. There have been other books like it, by authors like Salman Rushdie and David Mitchell, and I just came across a new one.

Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog is beautiful and subtle, but fun and compelling and delicious and French (in the flavor of Sartre's novels and Bonjour Triste), and it made me laugh and think and stop and wonder and . . . when I finished reading it, I hugged it to my chest and cried.

I got it from the library, but I'm going to pick up my own copy when I go out later today. This book just married into my family, and needs to be kept close.