I want to tell you about the very first novel I read, and how I came to read it, and how it has remained my favourite book.
When I was 11 years old my mum took a sudden interest in my reading habits, or lack thereof. We’d just moved from Montreal to Vancouver and I’d gone from an A-student to… well, something else. I developed stomach pains bad enough to warrant an in-school therapist. One day a girl called Bonnie who saw the same therapist looked at me and said, “They think we’re crazy, you know.” And I thought, I’m not like you.
But I was.
So my grades were slipping and my mum decided, well, I can’t fix these other things but god help me I can make sure my boy isn’t illiterate. She came home one day with several books from the library and said she expected me to read them. The wild thing was, she’d bought these books. One on electricity. One on simple machines. They had beautiful embossed covers and looked like what you’d order from Time Life Books as part of a subscription.
I didn’t read them. But they were the gateway drug to get me to the library, if only to find a book that wasn’t educational. Now, if you know me well this might sound weird, because you’ll have seen me in a bookstore like a hyena in front of a fallen antelope. I love books. LOVE them. I buy several every month and sometimes with no intention of reading them but just because they’re beautiful objects. I am coo coo for coco books.
But there was a time when I forgot I liked to read because I was a) depressed and b) anxious and c) untethered.
And the point here is that mums are amazing, and will fight for you when you don’t even know you need to fight for yourself. I know not everyone has this type of mum but if you do it’s like a cheat code for life.
The other thing I have is an older sister who likes to read. And while we were at the library she suggested I try Roald Dahl. Most people start with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or The Witches or The BFG. But completely by random she chose Danny, the Champion of the World.
It’s about a father raising his son and it’s about pheasant poaching and it’s about the distance between two men and it’s about family and love. It’s not, let’s be clear, what you necessarily think of when you think of depressed pre-pubescent boys. But there I was, tucked into our leather sectional, reading it all the same.
Most of the really exciting things we do in our lives scare us to death. They wouldn't be exciting if they didn't.
I’d like to say that having read it I suddenly wasn’t lonely or depressed anymore and I went on to live a loneliness- and depression-free life, but that didn’t happen. Books don’t have that power. But they can point you in a direction and tell you, yeah it’s weird and you’re not going to know where you’re going for a long time, but that’s ok. It’s going to be ok.
When I read Danny, the Champion of the World now, that’s what it says to me.
And it was right.
DO: I mean what else - read Danny, the Champion of the World.