Bibliopath #11: In which time has some explaining to do
Dear reader,
The writing of this has been on pause for a while. I guess it's partly because this newsletter is predicated on the assumption that 'reading makes things better'—an assumption that is at least a little clouded when someone is somehow placed into one of the most powerful offices in the world might never have finished a book.
I'm not sure why this bothered me so much, when I live in a different country (albeit a country with an equally grotesque immigration law). At least part of the answer I know is that social media which protracts that distance and gives me first row seats to the unfurling dystopia. This is why social media is difficult for the over-empathetic.
And yet, reading does make things better. The act itself is its own proof sometimes. Such was the case with Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me, a Newbery Award winner (I was saying to Bec and Karen that I've never been disappointed when I've picked up a Newbery book, as opposed to big name literary fiction awards, where I've been disappointed on multiple occasions). Not coincidentally, it's a book about empathy: empathy for childhood friends and enemies, empathy for your past and future self, empathy for those outside of your comfort zone. (Now I think of it, there's a few thematic parallels with the wonderful Arrival too.)
It's a book about Miranda, a sixth-grader growing up in Manhattan with a small obsession with A Wrinkle in Time. I hesitate from saying that When You Reach Me is a homage to A Wrinkle in Time (you don't have to have read one to read the other) but one of the building books of the book is the author's own childhood love for Madeline L'Engle's classic book, and she uses that relationship to build into some of the relationships that Miranda herself goes through, and into the mystery of why Miranda starts receiving strange, impossible notes.
To say more is difficult without spoilers, but there is so much that I love about this book: the way Stead captures the arrythmic on/off again of relationships in that age, the way the language piles up into these short, sharp chapters that are framed like game show questions, the way that Stead steadily avoids cliche or condescension in Miranda's mother and her boyfriend.
Read it, it will make things better. And then it will be our turn.
Guan
P.S. If ever I can help you with a reading recommendation, write me back.