I'm beginning my holiday-at-home with a reread of this lovely novel. These are my no-holiday, no-Pride, no-mooching-around-in-Paris, my end-of-August reading-nothing-but-books-I'll-love-for-days-on-end days. And this book, which I first read six years ago, is a wonderful start. It's the closest I've ever read to my own first year at college, I think. So many things are familiar - Cath's writing fanfiction in her room while everyone's out getting drunk (I spent those nights rereading 'Dracula' in an ancient pan paperback!), and that whole-hearted absorption in characters she loves - and that business of her tricky family and her various, gradual attachments to boys. The evocation of a snowy campus, too - and the sheer, muddle-headed, slightly woozy excitement of showing your first stories to other people.
Like many of the novels that have become my favourites - and the ones to return to - this had nostalgia written all over it, even the first time I read it.
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