One of my reading finds at the end of 2016
was Alison Uttley’s ‘Christmas Stories’. I thought it was something I’d dip
into, but I was pulled into her world. Rural, mystical… and so calm. This
Puffin has waited a long time in the Beach House – wrinkled, yellow, damp and
flattened out to dry on a summer’s day years ago. Waiting for just the right
moment. I thought it might be too twee to hold my attention, but I really loved
it. Uttley is one of those people whose writing really takes hold of me.
Remember
that – when you equivocate about carrying on and persevering with somebody’s
book. The ones that really grab you always stand out. You’re in no doubt this
is what you want to be reading. You’ll listen to them talking about just about
anything. You’ll even listen to them repeating themselves, as Uttley does, in
these stories drawn from many different books across her career.
I was also
reading Nina Beachcroft’s ‘Cold Christmas’ from 1974. I feel as if I read
something by her a long time ago, mostly forgot it, and am trying to find it
again. This one was new to me, but hit many of the right buttons – the big
house, being snowed in, the ramshackle cast of people trapped together, not
quite getting on. The kids having their own, quite frightening adventures and the
adults not quite understanding. Spooky animals. A near-fatal accident in the
snow. Some ghostly time-slippage and a mystery cleared up.
I spent quite a
few Christmas afternoons in my study, in the comfy chair with Bernard Socks
occasionally dashing in to doze for several hours with me. I was burrowing down
into pages. Having the usual Twixtmas thoughts about – oh, couldn’t I just stay
here and read for the whole coming year? Wouldn’t that be the best thing? I’d
learn so much. I’d go to so many places. I’d get so much done. I’d be going
deeper into somewhere magic. Somewhere that needs a lot of attention and energy
to keep it going.
Wonderful
passage about how a character is changed for the better by a ghostly experience
–
“As Josephine broke free and ran away laughing
until her stomach ached she had a moment’s memory of her first day here and how
she had been cross, acutely shy and all closed up upon herself. Nevermore could
she be quite as she was: a spirit from the past had broken the little icy shell
of self, the brittle outer covering with which she was encased, to play its own
melody upon her, as upon some musical instrument, and she had responded.”
And this seemed
to me, as I read it, exactly how the best spooky stories ought to feel – the
character is transformed by the experience. They are brought out of themselves,
through having connected with something old and complicated – often something
moving, uplifting, strange or mythic. And it’s more than that – it’s not just
the state of the character at the end of the book, it’s about the adventure of
reading itself. The book itself cracks you open as a reader and plays upon your
spirit – getting in deep and haunting you. And you let yourself by haunted by
it, quite happily.
Books get into
you.
Also,
because of the context of this scene – in which Josephine and Simon decide
never to meet again (because strange things happen when they are together…) it
makes me think all this might be about friendship and love, too. Of the kind
that stops you sulking about yourself. That brings you out into company.
Sometimes
it seems to me that reading is great practice for being close to other people.
Necessary practice. No one ever really tells you this, but it’s true. It draws
you closer and gives you skills and tact for coping with others (and yet –
especially when young – we were always told that it made us solitary and bad at
mixing. When all the while it was the very opposite.) This is a nice set of
epiphanies for the gap between Christmas and New Year. Waking up from ghost
stories and seasonal festive dreams – into new days, renewed friendships – and
a sense of being open to the world.
That charged,
magical feeling was there throughout Margaret Mahy’s stories, too, in ‘The Door
in the Air.’ That feeling of being on the edge of realizing something amazing;
of being dragged into an astounding epiphany by a story. I love Mahy because
she can be winsome and phantasmagorical, but then very down-to-earth and
satirical. She is all of these things in quick succession in this book – with
the accent always on urging us to go out and have adventures and explore and be
brave – and to create and to think of it all as art. To think of what you do as
good as – even better than – anything that’s ever been done before. Her stories
are all about valorizing and celebrating your own abilities and the things you
do with them. She’s brisk, energizing, and so gobsmackingly audacious she makes
you want to stretch your imagination as far as it will go. She’s like a
wonderful aunty, cheering you on. It’s very generous work.
These
are the women I read over Christmas – carrying their books with me as I cooked
and peeled vegetables and turned leftovers into vast puff pastry pies and stood
in the kitchen eating pate on toast with Jeremy and drinking wine. I’d vanish
in the afternoons with my books (all three, I think, out of print) and I’d
marvel at them.
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