Closing the Book
When I finished Normal People I chucked my copy across my room. Suddenly pulled from the parting of these two characters I didn’t expect to like, with a last page that left me with bated breath, my mouth dropped open and my book crashed to the floor. I’d dedicated an intense week to Marianne and Connell’s fiction love and here I was, dumped. Feeling that familiar mix of grief and awe that comes with the end of a good book, I exhaled heavy and sunk back into my pillow, willing myself to stay awake a little longer, resisting the call of my phone to be able to stay in this bubble a little longer before picking the book up and putting it on the shelf as a goodbye to these characters.
When I finished I’m With The Band, I hugged my copy close. As a big book, I’d been intimidated to start it, but soon sank into the comfort of a morning and night ritual with Pamela Des Barres. With the book being her diary, our time together was like coffee with a friend, adding a sense of that warm fuzzy feeling that comes from the best kind of socialising where conversation flows easily and dotted with laughter, bringing a bit of that missed joy into my lockdown months. On the final page, dated almost 10 years from it’s beginning, I read slowly. I brushed my eyes over the afterword at a snail pace, the same speed you’d walk with a long-distance friend to the airport. With no more words to cling onto, I closed the book and didn’t move from my seat, letting myself get cold down by the canal so I could stay for a while in the space we’d made. Pamela and me, a 72-year-old woman I’ve never met, who had been a best friend for a month or so now. I keep the book by my bed still, too dear for the shelf across the room.
I think it’s the most beautiful sense of loss. In that exhale you get a mix of pride, awe, inspiration, education, joy, sadness; I think it could be the fullest sound in the world. You sit there for days, weeks, months, dedicating yourself to the task of getting to that final world, and when you do, the pages have to pry your fingers away. And when I’m finally free, finally left the bed or walked away from the bench, your mind stays racing around the plot and characters, giving you the same full feeling months down the line when your eyes catch the spine on your shelf. It took me a while to realise that reading a book can never be a waste of time, seeing it as some kind of practice in opening up for people and stories to wander into your life and then letting go of their immediate presence, choosing how close or distance they stay in your memory.
But it wasn’t always like this. After 3 years of an English degree, reading a new book every week and treating them like slogging tasks to get through, I could probably only list 5 of the numerous texts I read. Despite analysing their meaning and voicing my thoughts in discussions, I couldn’t recall a word of T.S Eliot’s The Wasteland or tell you a thing that happened in The Good Soldier. I think the speed of it might have even robbed me of texts I would now deeply love, determined to go back and give Mrs Dalloway the justice it deserves. And while I haven’t shaken the habit of vandalising my books with underlinings and little notes, I think it took me finishing my literature degree to realise how much I love literature. Removing the rush and the constant pressure to consider significance, my final closed book exhale can be full and free from stress, head swimming round the joy of what I’ve just read rather than the pressure of conversation points and essays to plan. And while I definitely miss the feeling of sitting in a room and talking about the book, I’ve found a newly captive audience in my mum, feigning interest as I re-hash the entire plot to her.
In the year since finishing, my book collection has probably doubled. No longer having to stretch my student budget to cover the cost of another novel I’ve never organically reach for, I’ve found myself suddenly having a stack of books yet unread, constantly tidying up the pile of flicked-through old poetry books that sit by my bed. Replacing the feeling of obligation around reading has made room for excitement, dancing down the hallway to the bath with a book in toe, or planning my Sunday around reading with a coffee in the park. I feel joy in being able to buy the books I want, in thinking about the home-library I hope to one day have, in reading chapters slowly without guilt, in returning to characters after a week off, and I feel it intensely when I close the book, swimming in the magic of the author’s brain with no rush to shoo the characters along and nowhere else to be.
Lucy Harbron
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