When books are buttresses

On days when living my own life feels untenable, I disappear into the lives of others.

A hot summer day several years ago, reading with my daughter and never suspecting how much I would come to relate to Nina Riggs.

This week I’m writing from the depths. Some days I am relatively myself and feel like I am coping well. Not thinking too much ahead. Making the most of the time I have right now. Doing the things that matter to me. I thought I was managing.

Somehow that all fell apart this week. I don’t know why. It began around my appointment with the oral treatment team, who explained to me all the possible things that this drug could do to me, and the importance of checking my blood pressure twice a day and bloods once a week. Everyone couldn’t have been kinder, but I was tearful. The doctor reminded me that this drug is my best chance of extending my life, and then I felt stupid for worrying about it. Of course I want the drug. Of course I want to live as long as possible.

But since then I’ve gone leaden inside, waking every morning feeling that there is nothing I am looking forward to doing. I’m struggling with the novel I’m writing, in a way that has never happened before. Today I found out that my final corrections to my thesis were accepted and thus I’m truly done with my PhD, and when I read the message I felt nothing. Not even a minor uplift. I move through my days like a ghost of myself.

The day after I saw my new team, one of the doctors or nurses rang me. We want you to talk with a doctor, they said, because we noticed your morale is low. We’d like to help you arrange to see someone. I was impressed that they saw that deeply inside me, and that they wanted to help. But my appointment with the psychiatrist is not until the end of April, which feels a lifetime away. I can’t help but think that therapy and medication are nice, but they can’t take away the possibility that I won’t live to see my daughter grow up.

I do all the things that are supposed to help; I go for walks, do yoga, eat healthy things, write. But they make no difference.

At the moment, the only thing holding me together is reading. While being alone with one’s thoughts is essential for a writer, it feels dangerous right now. My mind dives down into dark places and presents me with unbearable futures.

I used to treasure long walks to let my mind wander and present me with new ideas, but now I cannot be alone with my mind. So I listen to audiobooks while I walk—and while I cook, while I wash the dishes, and while I floss my teeth.

I am a late adaptor of audiobooks, and I still much prefer to read printed paper books. Paperbacks are my favorite medium. I have always been a visual learner, needing to know how an unfamiliar word or name is spelled before I can remember it. I learn languages better on paper, writing and reading, than I do by listening. So I figured that I wouldn’t be able to keep track of an audiobook, that my mind would wander and I would miss things.

Yet I have not found this to be true. I find myself so riveted by the books I have been listening to that I’m annoyed when I run into someone in the village and have to remove my ear buds. I’ve also discovered that audiobooks are true performances; the actors who read them add a whole new dimension of the story. When I listened to Lessons in Chemistry, the way the actor portrayed someone disparaging the protagonist just by saying her name, saying “Elizabeth,” in just the perfect tone of outrage, made me laugh. I can still hear it. Phrases, accents, and particularly lyrical language get stuck in my head like songs.

So now I am always reading one paperback and one audiobook, the two stories running on parallel tracks in my mind. Pressing out bleakness. My book selection (other than the books I read for research) is currently random, depending on what is sitting on top of the piles in my office, what is available on audiobook, and what people recommend.

On audiobook, I’ve recently listened to A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Elmear McBride, Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, Home by Marilyn Robinson, Trespasses by Louise Kennedy, Flight by Sherman Alexie, Still Life with Breadcrumbs by Anna Quindlen, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, The Dutch House by Anne Patchett, Antigone by Sophocles, Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano, and Interesting Facts about Space by Emily Austin.

On paper, I’ve recently read Tessa Hadley’s The Past (evocative writing, unmemorable), Graham Greene’s The Human Factor (grim but gripping), Maureen Freely’s The Life of the Party (biting satire of expatriate life in Istanbul), Stella Rimington’s Secret Asset (Rimington was the head of MI5, so she knows what she’s talking about, though her prose is unlikely to win any awards). It turns out I read more audiobooks than print books these days, only because I spend so much more time walking than I do sitting still.

I particularly love listening to Irish books, because of the musicality of the language. I read Louise Kennedy’s beautiful Trespasses on paper, but then listened to it as well because I wanted to hear the Northern Irish accents. And it is a book that bears re-reading. It broke my heart over and over but I loved it.

I could never bring myself to re-read A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, despite the lyrical language. It tore me apart. There is no question it is a brilliant novel, with innovative prose and so much to say about what it is to be a girl in the world, but it takes a stout, stable mind to endure its brutality. I feel like I barely survived it.

Home seemed to take forever. It is so painfully slow. Most of the book is taken up by characters moving from room to room, making coffee, washing clothing, making a meal, sitting down to eat it. Characters speak to each other in dull, polite language that conceals their true selves. I found it nearly unbearable; I felt like I was becoming a housewife by proxy just by constantly suffering through all the household chores. Of course Robinson is a beautiful, evocative writer, but her narratives often seem meant for a more patient reader, interested in the study of religion and the stillness of lives lacking in ambition and interest.

I unreservedly adored Still Life with Breadcrumbs and Demon Copperhead. I was glad I listened to Demon Copperhead, because the narrator came to life so vividly and his accent constantly reminded me where we were; I felt like I was listening to a friend. That book also broke my heart over and over, but kept tacking it back together. One of the things that struck me most profoundly about the story of this young man was his love for the place that shaped him. When he imagined living elsewhere, it was with dread. How could he move somewhere where no one knew who he was and what he had accomplished? Where he did not mean anything to anyone? And I had never thought of moving quite like that. I’m clearly the opposite, easily settling in to new places, forming new relationships. But I felt what he meant in my bones. It made me question my own choices. How rich life could be in a community where people have always known you.

Antigone, which I once studied as a young actor, was frustrating as an audiobook. The narrator had to constantly tell us who was talking, which interrupted the flow of the play, and he wasn’t very good. It didn’t make sense to me that a man would be reading the parts of Antigone and her sister. Was the audiobook company too cheap to hire an additional actor? My daughter is reading Antigone for school and I like reading the same books she is, so we can talk about them.

I thoroughly enjoyed Interesting Facts about Space. It’s refreshing to read a queer novel that is less about coming out and more about figuring out how to navigate relationships and create a life. It’s funny, moving, a little scary, and has cool facts about space.

The Dutch House disappointed me. The house as a central character wasn’t compelling enough to work for me. Worse, the most interesting character dies too soon. I felt I had too little time to get to know most of the characters. The narrative whisked so quickly through time I wanted it to slow down and expand into more real-time scenes. The writing was solid, but I was ultimately unmoved.

Because the book I am writing is historical fiction, I have also been listening to historical fiction, paying attention to structure as well as the story and language. I once did a speaking event with author Kate Quinn, bestselling author of historical fiction, so I turned to her books. I first read The Alice Network, about a network of female spies in France, which I enjoyed immensely. I particularly enjoy her women, sparky and stubborn, intelligent and independent. And while it was a bit too neat to be believable, the ending was wholly emotionally satisfying.

I’m now in the middle of The Rose Code, about the women of Bletchley Park. I always love reading about the women of Bletchley Park. At the same time, I am reading Transcription by Kate Atkinson, which Tim gave me for Christmas. The two books feel like they are in conversation with each other, each focused on intelligence during World War II.

Ultimately, all of these books did the job of taking me away from my own life. But they did much more. They reminded me of the sufferings I have never personally experienced: war, famine, rationing, addiction, amputation. More importantly, they reminded me that life is short for many of us, and its brevity needn’t indicate a lack of meaning. These books also remind me how much grief has always been a part of life, and that people do often endure it.

No doubt there will come a time when distraction from my own life is not enough to hold back the dark, and I will have to confront my own narrative. I can only hope that the narratives of others can help me find the strength to bear it.

PS - Because these last two posts have been a bit dark, I’m sending you something completely different and perhaps more diverting next week!