In a statement that could serve as the theme of Bookish, Lucy Mangan’s memoir/guide to the joy and power of books and reading, she notes: “If I have done one thing right in my life it is this: I have always read for pleasure and never with an eye to impressing others or keeping up with the bestseller or Booker lists.”
Bookish picks up where Mangan’s memoir of childhood reading, Bookworm, leaves off. Mangan is entering adolescence and readers of the earlier book will be unsurprised she doesn’t find it plain sailing. “Nobody … likes a bluestocking. And they especially don’t like those who know the word ‘bluestocking’ 150 years after it fell out of common use.” But the set texts at school are no consolation. Wuthering Heights bores her to “furious tears”. Shakespeare was simply too hard. Hardy’s Tess was “feminism, yes, but a very quiet sort, and there’s lots of countryside to get through in between”. Chaucer, unexpectedly, is a hit – he wanted to tell a story, unlike Shakespeare, who was “doing it deliberately”.
Mangan, a high-profile writer for the Guardian and publications, burns through her personal reading as avidly as ever.
Her state school principal suggests Cambridge, and she is accepted to study English literature. But first there’s a gap year working in secretarial roles. With her newfound riches she “discovered that Nineteen Eighty-Four was not the only dystopia in town. A girl in possession of a fortune could take her pick.”
At Cambridge there are nasty shocks such as the metaphysical poets, but Mangan grows to love Anne Brontë, chivalric romance and Lolita, while “going out (in my own limited way) and having fun (ditto) …” It’s here that she develops the lifelong addiction to secondhand book shopping that will see her amass more than 10,000 books over the next 20-odd years.
Tales of Mangan and her husband’s book foraging – yes, she finds a partner despite not liking sex because you can’t read during it – are one of the many pleasures of Bookish. Partly it’s nostalgia for the serendipity of this sort of book selection; the almost-forgotten, non-algorithm-dictated treasures Mangan describes so enticingly – Norah Lofts, Lace, Dodie Smith, EL Konigsburg. Partly it’s the charm of picturing Mangan and her husband spreadsheeting their way around picturesque English counties so they can cosy up by a fire with a book tower each.
To distract her husband from his unspeakable desire to merge their book collections, Mangan suggests a baby. A boy is born while Mangan is going through an Edward Rutherfurd stage – big books during which it’s very difficult to breastfeed. And then “[Lee Child’s] Reacher became my everything”. There are dark bits here. Mangan suffers from postnatal depression and it takes two years of quiet reading sessions – facilitated by her doctor mother – and prescription drugs to get her out of it.
Books come to the rescue years later when her beloved fellow-bookworm father dies. This time it’s romantic fiction that helps her face the world again, with Mangan appreciating the move away from the “ditzy/hot mess heroines that spring up post-Bridget Jones” towards the more thoughtful, capable heroines of Emily Henry, Stephanie Butland and others.
Mangan has an unerring eye for a captivating author-related anecdote. A favourite from her earlier book was Maurice Sendak sending an illustrated note to a young fan. The mother wrote back, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” Another notes Valley of the Dolls author Jacqueline Susann literally taking apart a Harold Robbins bestseller: cutting up three copies and re-organising the pages by character and theme to teach herself how to write her own hit.
At the beginning of Bookish, Mangan quotes Flaubert’s direction to “read in order to live”. Mangan certainly does. Keep a notebook handy to jot down recommendations.
Bookish: How Reading Shapes Our Lives, by Lucy Mangan (Square Peg, $45 hb), is out now.
