A disastrously-disappointing book, made more so by the fact that I bought the book in response to recommendations I'd gotten. There's over 20 dollars down the drain, and a new book on its way to the landfill, which is something I NEVER do. I found no other proper response than to treat the book as it is: trash.
I suppose the main reason I was so thoroughly repulsed is that it took something of inestimable value to me and represented it as ultimately devoid of any meaning. Since a year before kindergarten, I have vacuumed up books without stopping. In reading I have found wonder, adventure, fun, touching emotion, and deep meaning. I have sought out the works of great authors not just for their genius in crafting story, but their profound insights into the human condition and human issues. I have stockpiled mountains of wonder, feeling, and wisdom. Books have taught me to THINK. How can you get much better than that?
This book was represented to me as the deep musings of a kindred spirit, a pondering of why books had the ability to weave such magical spells and pull us into an interior universe. The book began that way. Although a bit ponderous in its musings on child psychology theory, I thought that we were well on our way to something great.
As it turns out, I ought to have paid more attention to psychology early on: Spufford's own. By the time I got a bit more than halfway through the book, I realized that he and I were nothing alike in our reasons for diving headlong into book after book. For him, it was pure escapism from family realities that he could not face. He candidly describes how his sister's disease required all the attention and resources his parents could give. The author felt his reality shattered by this, and turned to books first to escape, and then to vent his childish and selfish rage. While I cannot judge a person whose shoes I haven't occupied, I was repulsed by his crassness, insensitivity, phobia, and near hatred of disabled people--by his own admission!
So whereas I find in reading wonder and wisdom, the author turned to books only to vent his insecurity, rage and lust. At the end of a childhood voyage through such luminaries as C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and Ursula LeGuin, we find that as a young man verging on adulthood that he has reached the grand vistas of...erotica. Porn! Since he apparently didn't have the spine to live a real life himself, he chose to spew his undisciplined drives into fantasy women that he could dehumanize in his mind as much as he wished. From the wonders of Narnia and Middle-Earth, with magic and deep meaning, he ends up with....nothing. Emptiness. Sheer instinctual drive reduction. How disgusting, and what a waste of a good mind and potential.
The book ends abruptly, as the author says, (paraphrased) "So then my sister died, and I went off to university. The details from here are none of your business. There. That's my book. The End.". I absolutely could not BELIEVE that this was the payoff toward which I'd labored for over 200 pages. In one fluid motion I closed the cover, walked into the kitchen, and plopped this hardcover waste of my money into the trash.
Do yourself a favor. Don't throw away your money on this book. If you borrow it at a library, read the last five or so pages. They will tell you all the takeaway you'll ever get from this book, and you will have conserved precious reading time which you can spend on something worthwhile.
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