Lucy Mangan: Bookworm
Mar. 2nd, 2019 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustIf you were only going to read one memoir of childhood reading, it wouldn't be this one, it would be Francis Spufford's The Child that Books Built. But if you are someone who reads memoirs of childhood reading, you probably aren't going to stop at one, so why not enjoy Bookworm as well? It isn't as well constructed as The Child that Books Built (which is quite suspiciously neat in its construction). But it is overflowing with good stuff, enthusiasm and humour and warmth. Also with occasionally extraneous matter (I didn't feel I needed Lucy Mangan's overviews of the history of children's books, and if I had needed them, I would probably have needed more than she gave).
Bookworm is the portrait of a happy family. From a very early age, Lucy reads, and is encouraged by her father, who brings her books: her mother and sister do not share this passion, but work round it. The adult Lucy reads to her own small son the books that she owned and loved in childhood - often the very copies she owned, which is impressive - and experiences the feelings of her child self as she does so. This is irresistible.
The internet is full of reviews in which the reviewer cries: "I love this book, it describes me exactly!" But what I find fascinating about the book is how much I recognise in her description of herself as an infant bookworm, and yet how exactly it does not describe me. Yes, like every other reader of the book I am delighted by its enthusiasm for overlooked treasures, things I thought no-one but me had read (in my case it was Antonia Forest's books about the Marlow family). But I am intrigued by the absences, the books she doesn't mention. I can't help suspecting that somewhere on the internet, there is a conversation about the books that Lucy Mangan didn't read.
This isn't just a question of age differences. I already knew Lucy Mangan through her writing in the Guardian, and the byline photo that accompanies that writing. But by the time I'd read a chapter or two, I was wondering if I was completely wrong about how old she is: from the books she was reading, she could have been my age, not (I checked) twenty-odd years younger. Setting aside the picture books (I must have read picture books, I suppose, but the only one I could name is M. Sasek's This is Paris), much of what she read was available when I was that age, and not new then: Narnia, Streatfeild, Little Women and huge quantities of Blyton. Here we diverge, because just about the only Blyton she seems not to have loved is The Magic Faraway Tree, just about the only Blyton I did like.
Which cuts straight to the huge difference between me and Lucy Mangan: Lucy does not - or did not as a child - read fantasy. Somehow the Narnia books escaped this veto, and became a favourite. Perhaps this is because her father handed over The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in a way which indicated that he had enjoyed it as a child; perhaps because the heroine was called Lucy (I might have been spooked by this, but Lucy takes it in her stride). She tries but doesn't get on with The Hobbit, and that's it for secondary world fantasy. Earthsea is not mentioned. In theory, she is more comfortable with this-world fantasy: "The Borrowers were welcome to share my world but I did not want to be a visitor stranded in someone else's universe entirely." It's a reasonable distinction. but in practice her reading of this-world fantasy doesn't go much beyond The Borrowers. She reads E. Nesbit, but only The Railway Children and The Treasure Seekers, whose humour she missed as a child (me too). The Phoenix and the Carpet is listed on her bookshelf without comment. Peter Dickinson gets one dismissive mention ("the likes of Peter Dickinson's The Changes series") and Diana Wynne Jones none at all. Oddly, 'Darkness Rising' appears as a chapter title, covering the less happy years of secondary school and dystopia. As an adult she discovers Joan Aiken and Frances Hardinge, so there is hope, but how sad to have been the right age to read these magical books, and not to do so.
Personal taste also rules out "books in which animals - especially talking animals - were the predominant feature." As an adult, she looks back on the books she missed this way and regrets it: "What an idiot." Since I shared - still share, to some extent (see under 'Dogsbody) - this prejudice, her list consists in large part of books I haven't read. I note, though, that I managed to overlook this rule sufficiently to read The Wind in the Willows repeatedly; Lucy Mangan waived it for Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, which I remember resisting at a time when it was ubiquitous. So I observe that she is defensive about it, without really knowing why: but I commend her recurring defense of reading books which are not highly regarded, which even she does not now regard as 'good'.
Another lacuna is explained in a footnote. They are good footnotes, worth hunting down. Since I read Bookworm on Kindle, I did not read them as they came up in the text. If there is a way to do this, I couldn't work out what it was, so I read all the footnotes at the end, occasionally looking back when it wasn't clear what they referred to. It was still worth it, but I wish I could have read them as they were surely designed to be read... Anyway, a footnote explains that although there was a huge amount of historical fiction in existence, she never came across it as a child, and hypothesises that it was unfashionable because history was not being taught in schools, and you need to know some history to be attracted to historical fiction. I'm not entirely convinced by this argument, and it doesn't help her case that having listed people like Geoffrey Trease and Barbara Willard as suffering from unapproachability, the example she gives of a historical novel worth the (surely rather greater effort) is The Children of the New Forest.
So, all these are interesting gaps, explained by taste and availability, but explained. There are books - and authors - I would have been delighted to encounter, but wasn't unduly surprised not to, oddities and one-offs and you can't read everything. But. One of the books about which she is most enthusiastic is Gwen Grant's Private - Keep Out! ("the funniest children's book ever written") I had never heard of it, but if we are going to talk about family stories which make us laugh, is it possible not to mention Anne Fine? Yes, I'm not disinterested, Anne is a client and a friend, and you don't have to like her work (humour is more than most things subject to personal preference) but how am I to interpret this silence? Presumably Hilary McKay's Casson family stories were published too late for Lucy's childhood reading, but I hope she has discovered them since...
To be fair to Bookworm, this is less a criticism, more the conversation I would like to have had with its author. There's an alternative post, in which I read you some of my favourite passages, but a better idea would be to read it yourself.
Bookworm is the portrait of a happy family. From a very early age, Lucy reads, and is encouraged by her father, who brings her books: her mother and sister do not share this passion, but work round it. The adult Lucy reads to her own small son the books that she owned and loved in childhood - often the very copies she owned, which is impressive - and experiences the feelings of her child self as she does so. This is irresistible.
The internet is full of reviews in which the reviewer cries: "I love this book, it describes me exactly!" But what I find fascinating about the book is how much I recognise in her description of herself as an infant bookworm, and yet how exactly it does not describe me. Yes, like every other reader of the book I am delighted by its enthusiasm for overlooked treasures, things I thought no-one but me had read (in my case it was Antonia Forest's books about the Marlow family). But I am intrigued by the absences, the books she doesn't mention. I can't help suspecting that somewhere on the internet, there is a conversation about the books that Lucy Mangan didn't read.
This isn't just a question of age differences. I already knew Lucy Mangan through her writing in the Guardian, and the byline photo that accompanies that writing. But by the time I'd read a chapter or two, I was wondering if I was completely wrong about how old she is: from the books she was reading, she could have been my age, not (I checked) twenty-odd years younger. Setting aside the picture books (I must have read picture books, I suppose, but the only one I could name is M. Sasek's This is Paris), much of what she read was available when I was that age, and not new then: Narnia, Streatfeild, Little Women and huge quantities of Blyton. Here we diverge, because just about the only Blyton she seems not to have loved is The Magic Faraway Tree, just about the only Blyton I did like.
Which cuts straight to the huge difference between me and Lucy Mangan: Lucy does not - or did not as a child - read fantasy. Somehow the Narnia books escaped this veto, and became a favourite. Perhaps this is because her father handed over The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in a way which indicated that he had enjoyed it as a child; perhaps because the heroine was called Lucy (I might have been spooked by this, but Lucy takes it in her stride). She tries but doesn't get on with The Hobbit, and that's it for secondary world fantasy. Earthsea is not mentioned. In theory, she is more comfortable with this-world fantasy: "The Borrowers were welcome to share my world but I did not want to be a visitor stranded in someone else's universe entirely." It's a reasonable distinction. but in practice her reading of this-world fantasy doesn't go much beyond The Borrowers. She reads E. Nesbit, but only The Railway Children and The Treasure Seekers, whose humour she missed as a child (me too). The Phoenix and the Carpet is listed on her bookshelf without comment. Peter Dickinson gets one dismissive mention ("the likes of Peter Dickinson's The Changes series") and Diana Wynne Jones none at all. Oddly, 'Darkness Rising' appears as a chapter title, covering the less happy years of secondary school and dystopia. As an adult she discovers Joan Aiken and Frances Hardinge, so there is hope, but how sad to have been the right age to read these magical books, and not to do so.
Personal taste also rules out "books in which animals - especially talking animals - were the predominant feature." As an adult, she looks back on the books she missed this way and regrets it: "What an idiot." Since I shared - still share, to some extent (see under 'Dogsbody) - this prejudice, her list consists in large part of books I haven't read. I note, though, that I managed to overlook this rule sufficiently to read The Wind in the Willows repeatedly; Lucy Mangan waived it for Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, which I remember resisting at a time when it was ubiquitous. So I observe that she is defensive about it, without really knowing why: but I commend her recurring defense of reading books which are not highly regarded, which even she does not now regard as 'good'.
Another lacuna is explained in a footnote. They are good footnotes, worth hunting down. Since I read Bookworm on Kindle, I did not read them as they came up in the text. If there is a way to do this, I couldn't work out what it was, so I read all the footnotes at the end, occasionally looking back when it wasn't clear what they referred to. It was still worth it, but I wish I could have read them as they were surely designed to be read... Anyway, a footnote explains that although there was a huge amount of historical fiction in existence, she never came across it as a child, and hypothesises that it was unfashionable because history was not being taught in schools, and you need to know some history to be attracted to historical fiction. I'm not entirely convinced by this argument, and it doesn't help her case that having listed people like Geoffrey Trease and Barbara Willard as suffering from unapproachability, the example she gives of a historical novel worth the (surely rather greater effort) is The Children of the New Forest.
So, all these are interesting gaps, explained by taste and availability, but explained. There are books - and authors - I would have been delighted to encounter, but wasn't unduly surprised not to, oddities and one-offs and you can't read everything. But. One of the books about which she is most enthusiastic is Gwen Grant's Private - Keep Out! ("the funniest children's book ever written") I had never heard of it, but if we are going to talk about family stories which make us laugh, is it possible not to mention Anne Fine? Yes, I'm not disinterested, Anne is a client and a friend, and you don't have to like her work (humour is more than most things subject to personal preference) but how am I to interpret this silence? Presumably Hilary McKay's Casson family stories were published too late for Lucy's childhood reading, but I hope she has discovered them since...
To be fair to Bookworm, this is less a criticism, more the conversation I would like to have had with its author. There's an alternative post, in which I read you some of my favourite passages, but a better idea would be to read it yourself.
