"How Reading Changed My Life" by Anna Quindlen

Published: 1998
Read: 2011
Genre: Non-fiction
Rating: 4
Review: Goodreads









A very quick read by a bestselling author whose love of books radiates from the pages.  She attributes this love to a certain restlessness as a child, and says this:

"So I wandered the world thought books.  I went to Victorian England in the pages of Middlemarch and A Little Princess, and to Saint Petersburg before the fall of the czar with Anna Karenina.  I went to Tara, and Manderley, and Thornfield Hall, all those great houses, with their high ceilings and high drama, as I read Gone with the Wind and Jane Eyre."

A number of other quotes from the book are on this post so I will not re-type them here.  I do however, want to write about some thoughts she has on why and what women read and how this differs from men.  Despite being broad generalizations that will not be true for everyone, I would like to explore further.

"...I began to think that women read differently than men....a Gallup poll taken in 1991 showed that women were more likely than men to find reading a more relaxing pastime than watching television....Some bookstore owners say their women customers are more likely to read novels, while the men more often choose biographies and history. Perhaps women feel more of a need to escape their own lives and take up those of others than men do."

"But it also seemed to me...that women seem to see reading not only as a solitary activity but as an opportunity for emotional connection, not just to the characters in a novel but to those others who are reading or have read the same novel themselves."

And:

"This ability of a book to lesson isolation is important, not simply for personal growth, but for cultural and societal growth as well."

I am also remined of a quote by Maureen Corrigan in her book, Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading.  Here, she muses as to why she and fellow bookworms read:

"...search for authenticity.  We want to get closer to the heart of things, and sometimes even a few good sentences contained in an otherwise unexceptional book can crystallize vague feelings, fleeting physical sensations, or sometimes, profound epiphanies...Readers, professional or casual, are alert to passages in a book that illuminate what was previously shadowy and formless."

It is the combination of these thoughts that speak to me.  My life is now segregated in terms of "pre" and "post Josh" - like a thick black line or better said, a chasm that irrevocably separates my two selves.

"Pre-Josh", I read novels.  Quickly.  The faster, the better.  I wanted to connect with the characters and get lost in their story. These kinds of books are aptly called "brain candy" by some.  "Post-Josh", I read for "emotional connection" and to "lesson isolation" as Quindlen says.  I also read to "crystallize vague feelings" and illuminate the "shadowy and formless" as said by Corrigan.

In fact, everything I read now is with a filter - plain and simple: Josh's death. I am searching for authenticity or truth.  I look for meaning and understanding.  I want to find the answer to THE unanswerable question: "Why, Josh, why?"

I was thinking about this over two weeks ago and drew a funnel in my journal.  At the top, where the width is greatest, I wrote the following: dreams, writing, journaling, books, thoughts, quotes, ideas, conversations, stories, memoirs, fiction, survivor of suicide books, parental bereavement books, lyrics, movies.  At the bottom of the funnel, is THE question.  After drawing this, I wrote:

"So, as opposed to others, who have no real issues, pain, sorrow, grief or tragedy, and read just to read, because they like books and have been bookish all their lives, I read and write for salvation.  To avoid or bypass mental illness, post traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, my own temptations of suicide. To be able to function.  Reading and writing is a life support.  It sustains me.  Guides me.  Illuminates.  Forces me to follow thoughts and ideas that would previously be unknown or simmering in my subconscious, wreaking havoc.  Reveals what is dormant - thoughts or feelings that lie beneath conscious thought.  If left untouched or not brought to the light of scrutiny, it could in fact, cause mental illness, breakdown, even madness."

It surprised me then, how quickly and easily these words flew from pen to paper.  And as I re-read and type them now, they still ring true.

Grieving is a lonely business.  I would not survive if not for the companionship offered in books and in my journal.

"Every Last One" by Anna Quindlen

Published: 2010
Read: 2011
Genre: Fiction
Setting: Vermont town, modern time
Rating: 4
Review: Goodreads
Website devoted to her work





I saw a review of the book in the Washington Post awhile ago and remember thinking, "this is just up my alley.  Tragedy occurs in the life of a regular mom which she has to survive."  I am reminded of the book, "Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading, where Maureen Corrigan identifies a sub genre called the female version of the extreme adventure story.  In fact, she says her thoughts about this genre began after reading Quindlen's 1998 novel, Black and Blue.  The protagonist of that book was an abused wife and mother who eventually runs from her husband but lives in mortal fear for the day he tracks them down.

As opposed to the male extreme adventure story made popular by Into Thin Air or The Perfect Storm where men are in life-and-death situations, often against elements such as a mountain or the sea, Corrigan says the women in the female version are working just as hard to survive, but their settings are domestic.  Their struggles are internal - emotional and/or psychological.   I would say this book fits into Corrigan's sub genre.

"This is my life:  The alarm goes off at five-thirty with the murmuring of a public-radio announcer, telling me that there has been a coup in Chad, a tornado in Texas." 

With this first sentence, Quindlen thrusts us in the middle of Mary Beth Latham's busy life.  She is a wife of almost 20 years, a mother of three teenage children and has a successful landscaping business.  The spark has gone out of her marriage as depicted in the following quote:

"I can't quite recall, or evoke, that strange and powerful feeling that made me yearn to be with him every moment of every day, that made me think "till death do us part" sounded wonderful instead of simply like a very, very long time."

Her kids are her life - like me and most moms that I know.  She struggles with wanting intimacy with Ruby, her beautiful, independent seventeen year old daughter and with her fraternal twin boys, Alex and Max who are in middle school.   While Ruby is fine now, she had struggled with anorexia.  Alex is the athlete and popular one, while Max is the musician, quiet and depressed.  While reading the book, I was drawn into their lives with a pit in my stomach as I knew something really bad was going to happen to this family.  A family with issues, but what family doesn't?

NOTE: This book is helpful in my grief journey so the following contains spoilers.

Then "IT" happens.  With me, it was the suicide death of my seventeen year old son.  With Mary Beth, it was the nearly total disintegration of her family.  And of her.  The second half of the book is a story of survival.  Some of her thoughts brought me to tears because I can relate.  To her grief, her sorrow, her guilt, her struggle to cope, her emptiness.  

Meaningful quotes:

"One of the worst aspects of living now on the far shore is that across the chasm I can see my glib unknowing self.  I despise that woman, her foolish little worries and her cheap sympathies.  She knew nothing.  But I can't truly wish on her what I know now."

"My memories are booby-trapped."

"I have two selves now, too, the one that goes out into the world and says what sound like the right things and nods and listens and even sometimes smiles, and the real woman, who watches her in wonder, who is nothing but a wound, a wound that will not stop throbbing except when it is anesthetized.  I know what the world wants: It wants me to heal.  But to heal I would have to forget and if I forget, my family truly dies."

"It was not so much that I wanted to die; it was just that I could not bear the incessant feeling of being alive.  And then it occurred to me that I was already dead; that what was left behind was a carapace, like the shells of cicadas...I had been full, of creating children, of taking care, of tasks and plans and a big bright future, and now all that was left was a translucent skin of what had once been my life."

"The worst part are all the things they are missing.  All the things they won't get to have."

It has difficult to answer the question, "How are you?" from well-meaning friends.  Mary Beth's best friend comes to stay with her one weekend and wants to know.  Mary Beth can't answer her and thinks:

"Why should I share what no one wants to know?  Why should I listen to the words of those who know nothing?  I can predict what they will say:  It will get easier.  Lie.  You can handle this.  Lie.  Time heals.  Lie.  Time just passes. Slowly."

This is a book of a woman coping with a loss so great, it could drown her completely.  But because she has a son to look after, to care for, to live for, she will survive.  She must survive.  

I feel the same. 

Takeways:

Other books by Anna Quindlen

• Black and Blue
• One True Thing
• Good Dog. Stay
• How Reading Changed My Life