Last week’s edition of SMC asked readers to send in some recommendations for summer fiction that made a meaningful impact. That essay highlighted the capacity for well-written fiction to deepen the experience of the story that’s unfolding in our own lives.
This week, I’m thinking of the ways that a great novel can also function as a life preserver. I know that I’m not only one noticing the darkness of this year’s election season. The usual horserace dimension of things has arrived just like usual. What’s unique this year, is the amount of discord, the negativity, and a kind of sulfuric/apocalyptic quality to what comes out a politician’s mouth. I keep thinking that William Butler Yeats’ phrase about the center not holding fits our time way more than I wish it did (from the poem “The Second Coming”).
As a resilience researcher and psychotherapist, I want my clients, workshop attendees, and readers to know that if they’re utilizing a news related program as entertainment, or background noise, then rest assured, their resilience and happiness is being eroded. I want my clients, readers, and retreat attendees to know that if they’re reading news related sources as a way to pass the time, their resilience and happiness is being chipped away. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating an uninformed quietism. It’s just that so much of what is written and talked about in all form media these days amounts to a kind of “sound and fury signifying nothing” but regurgitated ruminations.
Reading a quality novel, or listening to it as an audiobook is like setting aside the Doritos and beer, and going for a good hike instead. It’s just gonna make you feel better. Today as you examine some fellow-readers recommendations for good fiction, consider replacing a resilience eroding habit with one of these investments in yourself.
There were way more suggestions made than could be published in this essay. Stay tuned, we’ll get to them next week! I promise.
Novels That Have Changed Me
Lynn Duffield,
Social Worker, Mother, Grandmother
My Dear Hamilton by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie, 2018. New York: Harper Collins.
This historical fiction is about Eliza Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton’s wife who faced many challenges in the early days of America’s founding, but was also a great support to Hamilton in his brilliant career. Her deep religious faith helped her find an inner balance while going through betrayal, disillusionment and tragedy. When I went through a devastating time, my spirituality, grounded in religious faith, along with an amazing support network, pulled me through that time. This book made me feel a kind of a kinship with this woman, and other women across the centuries.
On another note, the book included lots of interesting history articulated in a most compelling way. It was inspiring to read about a strong woman’s contributions to our country’s founding!
Father Joe Kempf,
Author, Pastor
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, 2014. Charles Scribner.
During the bleak horrors of the German occupation of France in WWII, ordinary people tried to survive. In the midst of such enormous devastation, it’s hard to imagine that human goodness or any attempt to even care would matter. It was hard for me not to look around at my own world a little more aware after seeing and hearing the world through the eyes of these folks.
The Overstory by Richard Powers. 2018. W.W. Norton
At first, I thought this was a series of rather disconnected short stories (some of which I was not particularly fond of). But the true heroes of the story—the overstory—are trees—hundreds of feet tall and hundreds of years old and connected in ways I’ve always intuited. That trees communicate in all sorts of ways beyond our awareness shows what I’ve long sensed:
That there is a wisdom and awareness in all of creation which invites to awe, to reverence and even to conscious connection with what we call “nature.’
Mary Openlander
Physical Therapist, Mother, Grandmother
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, 2005. Doubleday
In response to your request, this book, which I read fourteen years ago, quickly came to mind. A historical novel set in Hitler’s Germany is narrated by Death. Quite the literary device! Yet it is used so effectively that nothing is taken away from the young female protagonist, whose humanity, and the humanity of those who cared for her, absolutely broke my heart! Innocence meets darkness and prevails! A book that stretched my notion of hope beyond what were the current boundaries of the time.
I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys. 1989. Penguin Random House.
Set in Communist Romania in the 1980’s. It was a very fast read. It humbled me for the ignorance I had of this sad chapter in Romania’s history. It occurred during my childbearing years!! I’m grateful I met and temporarily lived with these young adult characters whose choices in life were so truncated by tyranny—real tyranny. Would I have been so brave? To whom or what do I owe my unmerited gift of living in a free country?
Impact upon me?
1. Tenderness of certain characters broke my heart, deepened my notion of hope. It gives you an opportunity to imagine yourself as a child navigating such uncertain times and discovering your own resilience and ability to love.
2. Deepened my commitment to continual learning and understanding of the world.
3. An opportunity to walk in the footsteps of young Romanians struggling to be free to work, marry, have a family while enduring life-or-death dealing surveillance at every turn.
Dialogue
What books were read to you as a child? Describe your visceral memories of those sessions as best you can. What is the felt sense in your body as you describe that experience?
What was the first book that you picked out and read for yourself as near as you can remember? What do you remember about it?
When was the last time someone read a book to you? What was that like?
Looking back over the years, what is a book that you would gladly re-read? Name a book that you have re-read. Why did you?