I have been so enjoying the audio book I downloaded to my ipod, The Stars Look Down by AJ Cronin. There is something very special about having a book read to you. I rather long for those bygone days when families used to gather round the fire and read to each other. The soothing cadences of the reader's voice, the freedom to close your eyes and picture the scenes as they materialise before your imaginative eye, the characters, in all their vivid descriptions, emerging from the shadows to populate the hearth-rug.
I am certain that I was read to as a child but I vividly recall the first moment I discovered that I could read for myself. It was bedtime and Dad had been deputed to do the honours.
'Read me a story,' I said.
'You read to me,' he replied.
I turned to one of my favourites, a poem in a large book whose title I forget (but, dimly, I remember blue lettering and the word Storytime) called A bird can fly.
'A bird can fly, so can I,' I read, amazed at myself.
I was definitely less than six years old.
There was no stopping me, after that. By the time I was ten I had read every book in the children's library and Mum approached the librarian to ask if I could begin getting books from the adult shelves 'under close supervision' even though I was not really entitled to an adult ticket until I was twelve. I read my way through Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Norah Lofts, Jean Plaidy and Somerset Maugham. I read Westerns and James Bond and Conan Doyle. Mum started guiding me towards writers she had loved; Elizabeth Goudge, Howard Spring, Mary Stewart and AJ Cronin. She was the big reader in the family. It is impossible to think of her, even now, without a library book on the arm of her chair, by the bed or on the kitchen table.
At sixteen I got a Saturday job at the library. I hated it, but staggered home each week with an armful of books. Living a sequestered kind of life, as I did, as a teenager, I explored the world through books, lived other lives, saw things through other eyes, walked a mile (or more) in every kind of shoe; the down-at-heel, the red patent sling-back, the ballet-pump, the moccasin, the jack-boot. There is nothing you cannot experience through a book; if you have never cried over one, you haven't lived. Books broaden our experiences, increase our learning, extend our sympathies, enhance our compassion.
They can also be dangerous. I have bumped into many a lamp-post trying to walk and read at the same time. I have lost nights' sleep. I have, perhaps, neglected the living for the fictional, on occasion.
You may know that I went on to study literature at University, devouring books, picking them apart, putting them back together. Sometimes it was a bit much, even for me. One week I had to read Anna Karenina, Cancer Ward and The Golden Bowl all in one week. (I never did find out how Anna Karenina finished until I read it again, quite recently.)
The Stars Look Down isn't in print any more but you can buy it pre-enjoyed from Amazon Marketplace, or as an audio book. AJ Cronin is probably more famous for Dr Finlay's Casebook which is still in print as well as available as a DVD and a BBC radio recording. Click here to see what's available Cronin writes realistic stories which manage to be gritty without being sordid, in prose which is evocative without being over-blown. His stories will engage male readers - I plan to engage my male with one very soon - his characters are solid and memorable, mainly men living hard lives in difficult circumstances. But their sheer humanity will make them appeal to women too. Don't look for heroes here, or derring-do. Cronin's men are like your brothers and your husbands and your sons; flawed, forgivable, faithful, admirable, annoying. Try The Keys to the Kingdom, which is also in print. Or go to your local library.
Let me know what you think. There is nothing nothing I enjoy so much as discussing books.
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