Mariella Hunt

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  • Marilla Cuthbert Was Already a Whole Woman

    Marilla Cuthbert Was Already a Whole Woman


    I believe that Marilla Cuthbert is one of the best-written characters in the literary canon, and also the most mysterious. So little detail is offered about her that she can easily be misunderstood or judged as harsh.

    For example, in Anne of Green Gables, Marilla isn’t as welcoming to Anne’s presence in her home as Matthew. Through the eyes of young Anne Shirley, who has been swept by train from one crisis to another, Marilla appears to be an unloving and cantankerous woman.

    However, readers who look closely at L.M. Montgomery’s original novel can immediately tell that there is more to Marilla Cuthbert. Today, creative license gives modern authors the freedom to try to fill in the blanks, allowing us to imagine backstories for characters like Marilla and, in doing so, enrich the reading experience.

    One of the books I believe does this best is Marilla of Green Gables by Sarah McCoy. In this lovingly written tribute to Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series, McCoy gives us a plausible backstory for a character who is, in truth, far more profound than she initially appears.

    Understanding Young Marilla Cuthbert

    As readers of L.M. Montgomery’s traditional series, we only know Marilla Cuthbert as she was in later life. We recall her fondly as a woman who, by nature, cannot abide idleness. In Marilla of Green Gables, Sarah McCoy describes Marilla’s childhood and gives us an entirely different perspective.

    The pages that cover Marilla’s childhood reveal a girl who is not so different from the Anne Shirley we know:

    Sometimes, as sinful as she knew it was, Marilla wanted to idle the day away however she pleased. When she could steal time, she’d take to the balsam woods with her Godey’s magazine leaflets and follow the brook until it cascaded to a little pool split in half by a maple growing right up through the center. She’d sit there on her island with the water bubbling around and read until the sun slanted thinly through the trees.

    This passage establishes young Marilla as a child who was really not so different from Anne Shirley, even if Marilla would never admit it to Anne when she was raising her.

    As children, Marilla and Anne both loved Green Gables and the many natural wonders surrounding it that made the place so special. They were both devoted to reading, though Anne was more inclined to let her imagination run away with her, depending on what she was reading.

    In terms of writing style, McCoy stays true to Montgomery’s technique of using the wonders of the outdoors to establish the mood of a story. Marilla does not dramatically rechristen natural landmarks with names such as Lake of Shining Waters, but in her own way, she is able to befriend the trees, learning every nook and cranny of the land.

    In Marilla of Green Gables, McCoy offers us a means by which to understand Marilla Cuthbert.

    Reader, recall that this novel is not canon; it ought not to be read as part of the Montgomery set. But I admire novels like this—the loving projects of souls who loved a classic novel so much that they needed more of it, and then went on to write it.

    Anne and Marilla Aren’t So Different

    One of the pleasures of Sarah McCoy’s Marilla of Green Gables is seeing the connection between young Marilla and the girl Anne Shirley will eventually become.

    Anne is famous for her imagination, her love of books, and her tendency to find beauty in the natural world around her. Marilla is more restrained, but McCoy shows us that the younger Marilla possessed many of these same qualities.

    The difference between them is not that one girl loves beauty and the other does not. It is that Marilla has learned to contain the imaginative child she once was.

    That makes her eventual relationship with Anne even more interesting. In some ways, Marilla is raising a younger version of the girl she might once have been.

    Marilla Cuthbert and Motherhood

    My previous post about the novel Hello Baby raised questions about motherhood and the desire to start a family. Marilla, in this novel, does not have the great desire for children that her friend Rachel White (later Lynde) does.

    Page 219 explores this from Marilla’s viewpoint:

    Marilla liked children, but motherhood seemed outside her realm of possibility… the tariff for motherhood was too great when there was already so much depending on her.

    I do not feel like enough classic novels include the viewpoints of women who, like me, do not live only with dreams of motherhood. It’s not that Marilla—or I—dislike children or the idea of them. But there are so many women who want to be known for other things. They wish to be remembered for passions they already have, rather than the children that might come along one day—if a good man turns up.

    In fact, right after the quote about the “tariff for motherhood,” Marilla’s reverie continues, taking a turn in the old-fashioned manner of thinking:

    Besides, to bear a child, one must first have a husband… on that account, Marilla could not deny the lingering weight of regret.

    We see that Sarah McCoy’s Marilla is not opposed to the idea of marriage. She is human, and—as I pointed out recently—most humans are fascinated by the magic and warmth of a love story.

    Indeed, Marilla is in love with one man. Due to a loss of temper, she has a falling out with him. She is the ultimate romantic in that she will love no one else. She will not settle for lukewarm love or an obligatory marriage simply for the possibility of having children.

    The irony is this: though Marilla does not yet know it, a child will one day come along—just not in the way she has always expected.

    Matthew Cuthbert and Marilla’s Bond

    Matthew Cuthbert appears for a very short time in Montgomery’s novels, yet everything he does and says seems more memorable than that of many other characters. He does not stay in Anne’s story for very long, yet manages to burrow into the hearts of readers who meet him.

    In Chapter 2 of Anne of Green Gables, he is introduced as a man who can only be lured out for important quests, such as retrieving an orphan from a train station. Montgomery gives us an endearing description of this man. His presence is so fleeting that he is almost a wild creature from the woods of Avonlea:

    …he was an odd-looking personage, with an ungainly figure and long iron-gray hair that touched his stooping shoulders, and a full, soft brown beard which he had worn ever since he was twenty. In fact, he had looked at twenty very much as he looked at sixty, lacking a little of the grayness.

    We are told that Matthew is reclusive: he “dreaded all women except Marilla and Mrs. Rachel; he had an uncomfortable feeling that the mysterious creatures were secretly laughing at him.”

    This description has always stood out to me, as it says so much about Matthew Cuthbert and yet so tantalizingly little.

    Sarah McCoy makes a beautiful effort to fill in the blanks behind this sentence. She paints us a picture of Matthew Cuthbert’s one and only true love, a girl named Johanna who led him to believe that he had a chance with her—then one day decided she did not want what Matthew could offer:

    “I’m not your sweetheart or anything else, Matthew Cuthbert. I’d rather die than be a farmer’s wife.”

    And we then see the strength of Matthew and Marilla’s bond:

    Saying nothing, Marilla put a hand on his back. He didn’t turn, and she didn’t face him…. She didn’t see him cry, but she felt it, trembling through his bones and into hers, like a tuning fork, until her own cheeks were wet with tears.

    There are not many sibling relationships in literature that hit as powerfully as that of the Cuthberts. They have grown up together in their family home, seen the years go by side by side, and, in spite of their differing personalities, need one another.

    They make choices together, as we see in the ninth chapter of Anne of Green Gables:

    “Well, now, she’s a real nice little thing, Marilla. It’s kind of a pity to send her back when she’s so set on staying here.”

    “Matthew Cuthbert, you don’t mean to say you think we ought to keep her!”… “What good would she be to us?”

    “We might be some good to her,” said Matthew suddenly and unexpectedly.

    McCoy’s most powerful Matthew quote is the following:

    “I have a voice just as much as you do. It’s a choice we make every minute. What truths are important enough to say aloud and what ones are important just to know…. You can change your mind anytime you want, but you can’t take words back. Not ever.”

    Marilla Cuthbert Was Already Whole

    Given the time in which she was born, Marilla Cuthbert’s life does not unfold according to the obvious script.

    She does not marry young to have children of her own. She does not spend her life dreaming about the family she might someday have. Instead, she builds a life with what she has: her home, her brother, her work.

    Eventually, all of this is uprooted with the arrival of a red-haired girl who has a lot to teach her. Make no mistake, though: Anne Shirley changes Marilla, but does not complete her. Marilla was already a whole woman before Anne came along.

    There is something deeply comforting about a character whose life is not presented as a waiting room for the life she is supposed to have. Marilla has desires, regrets, disappointments, and loves, but she is never merely an unfinished version of herself.

    She becomes a woman through the life she actually lives.

    Sarah McCoy’s Marilla of Green Gables gives us the pleasure of imagining all the years L.M. Montgomery left unwritten, but it also reminds me why those unwritten spaces are so compelling. The lives of women like Marilla cannot always be reduced to what they expected to become.

    Sometimes a fresh start is something we choose. Sometimes it is thrust upon us. And sometimes it arrives quietly, disguised as a person we never expected to love.

    Marilla did not know what her life would become. Perhaps that is the most beautiful thing about her. She did not have to know.

    She simply kept living it.

    And eventually, Anne arrived.

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  • Tea with Elizabeth Wellington Rollins, Author of The Three Graces of Pearl Street

    Tea with Elizabeth Wellington Rollins, Author of The Three Graces of Pearl Street


    There are some books that seem to arrive at exactly the right moment. The Three Graces of Pearl Street is one of those books. It’s a warm, hopeful novel about aging, friendship, and small acts of kindness that can transform a life.

    Elizabeth Wellington Rollins was kind enough to send me an ARC of this novel. I have posted a review of it, which you can find here.

    At the center of the novel is Graziella, a former nun whose devotion to serving others — often through food, generosity, and the simple act of showing up — gives the story much of its heart. Her relationship with her granddaughter, Ella, adds another layer to the novel, reminding us that the people we love most can sometimes be the very people who frustrate us most.

    I was especially interested in the novel’s treatment of later life. Rather than presenting aging as a period of decline, Rollins allows her older characters to remain complicated, funny, stubborn, faithful, loving, and very much alive.

    Her answers below offer a glimpse into the personal experiences and ideas that shaped the novel, as well as what she hopes readers will carry with them after the final page.

    The Interview

    Q: The Three Graces of Pearl Street explores aging with remarkable warmth and hope. What inspired you to write a novel that celebrates later life rather than treating it as a period of decline?

    A: I’ve always found warmth and hope in my relationships with older generations, and so this was less of a conscious choice and more of a default setting. I adored every senior in my family, and I soaked up my time with each of them like a sponge.

    I’ve also always sought out relationships with seniors in formal and informal ways. When I was living in Boston in my 20s, I was lucky enough to have a landlord who was in her 90s who was also my downstairs neighbor. We developed a regular rapport in our little brownstone, and she was bursting with life, verve, and humor. She made my world and my life so much bigger.

    I feel that way about seniors on the page, too. Ever since I read A Man Named Ove, which is published by the same imprint as The Three Graces of Pearl Street, I knew I would write an older character one day. I’m so delighted to see Graziella make her way into the world through this novel.Graziella’s commitment to serving others is one of the novel’s defining qualities. Was there a real person—or several people—who inspired her character?

    Q: Graziella is her own fictional character, but the seedpoint for her service has deep roots in my own family tree and some lovely people I’ve met along the way.

    A: I anchored her in the Italian-American culture of my maternal lineage, which inspired her primary mode of service: feeding people. I was always taught that service should be humble and anonymous or it doesn’t count, and Graziella definitely reflects that nuance, as well.

    Q: Faith and conscience play important roles in the story. How did you approach writing about religious conviction while allowing your characters to wrestle honestly with disagreement and moral complexity?

    A: I felt my way through this rather than approach the novel with a particular point of view. I knew that Graziella, a former nun who brought those values into her life in the neighborhood, would be someone who broke some rules to uphold others. There’s a line that Ella, her granddaughter, says, “She’s the most devout person I know and the least compliant.” And I also knew that the other two protagonists would have their own relationships with their faith, which changed as they changed.

    My view is that faith is a dance that no one is going to live out in the exact same way because every person is unique. One of the joys of having three protagonists is showing a few contrasting variations of that, which I hope adds to the nuance of the narrative.

    Q: The relationship between Graziella and her granddaughter, Ella, feels especially authentic. Were there particular family experiences or observations that helped shape their dynamic?

    A: I think there’s this relatable paradox that you can admire someone wholeheartedly the way Ella admires her grandmother Graziella and still be completely frustrated by them. Ella and Graziella are so alike that they struggle to fit into each other’s lives in a consistent way. I think it’s relatable, and I wanted to walk people through the evolution of the relationship from that starting point.

    Q: One of the novel’s central ideas is that ordinary acts of kindness can transform lives. Is this a philosophy that has guided your own life, or did it emerge as you were writing the novel?

    A: I’ve always valued kindness, and I was so grateful to pull that thread into the novel. The older I get, the more I appreciate the difference between kindness and niceties, too. Those two concepts often overlap, but they are not the same thing. Graziella’s character and, quite frankly, the generosity and decency of New Yorkers, often reflects that subtlety.

    Q: Many readers, myself included, found the novel comforting when thinking about grief, aging, and mortality. What do you hope readers carry with them after turning the final page?

    A: I’ve heard from early readers that the novel feels like home. That feedback meant the world to me because that’s what I set out to do while writing it. In an ideal world, home is a heartening place to be. It fills us up before we need to go into the world and face down challenges and uncertainties. The novel is an emotional journey, but I hope it leaves people feeling renewed and supported, the way I would wish that every person feels in their own homes.

    Q: Finally, just for fun: if you could sit down over coffee with Graziella for an afternoon, what question would you ask her—and what do you think her answer might be?

    A: I would, in earnest, ask Graziella how she would suggest that I manage this new career as a working mom. Betting on my creative work as a full-time novelist was a huge leap for me, and the role defies some of the norms of a 9-5 job.

    I would love to take marching orders from her about how to make it work. Not only the big picture, but the specificities: Should I freeze chicken cutlets before I leave town for every book event?

    Her answer would probably be harsh but effective: “You’re stuck in that head of yours like a mouse on a wheel—the plague of your generation! Trust your instincts or you’ll suffer until the end of time for no reason. You know better or you wouldn’t have asked.” I imagine her waving around a wooden spoon and raising her voice while she says it.

    A Final Thought

    The Three Graces of Pearl Street promotes a specific idea: the truth that a meaningful life is not necessarily built out of grand gestures.

    Sometimes, meaning is found in sharing meals with other people. It is nourished by friendships sustained over decades. Its mettle is tested in the arguments we have with people we love.

    Most of all, meaning is found in the decision to show up for someone when they need us.

    Home is not simply a place we inhabit. At its best, it is something we create for one another. And if Graziella really does have a wooden spoon in hand, I suspect she would agree.

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  • 5 Novels That Felt Like Fresh Starts

    5 Novels That Felt Like Fresh Starts


    We all long, on occasion, for a fresh start. We want to walk away from the lives we already live and lay the foundations for new ones, setting off toward places where we are unknown and our mistakes are, too.

    Literature is one of the few places in which we can actually live out that desire, at least for a while. Every book allows us to see the world through the eyes of a protagonist, sharing in their struggles and exploring their worldview until we reach the final page. If the book is good enough, we might find ourselves carrying some of those perspectives with us for many years afterward.

    Some novels, though, follow the specific drama of a character having to start over. The circumstances behind these changes might not all be peaceful, and they might not all be happy. Not all of these protagonists want to change who they are or where they belong, but fate—and the will of the author—does not always give them a choice.

    I pondered for a while on books about characters who, voluntarily or by force, had to change their identities, locations, or circumstances. Sometimes they were grateful for the change; other times, they pined forever for what they had left behind.

    These are five novels about starting over in all its various forms.

    1. The Enchanted April — Elizabeth von Arnim

    The Enchanted April is one of those books that, although quiet, covers a great deal of ground. On its surface, it is a story of four women who rent a chateau in Italy, hoping for a break from the monotony of their lives. But as time passes and they spend more time with one another, they begin to realize that something else is taking place.

    You cannot spend an entire season in a different country, surrounded by different people, without something inside you changing. These women may return to cloudy England looking the same, and their interactions with family and acquaintances may not differ all that much.

    But the weeks they spend in the Mediterranean sunshine will have altered something—brought to wakefulness an energy that none of them knew they possessed.

    The most powerful changes are seldom obvious, but they are the ones that last the longest.

    2. Isola — Allegra Goodman

    I have yet to find a novel that has made such a great impact on me as Allegra Goodman’s Isola. Not only is it beautifully written, capturing the time period in which the story takes place with remarkable precision, but we can see the transformation of its protagonist, Marguerite, in nearly every chapter.

    Marguerite’s “fresh start” in Isola is not a blissful trip to Italy. She is kidnapped by her cousin and taken against her will on an expedition to remote shores near Canada. But in a cruel turn of events, her cousin abandons her on an island, along with her nurse and the man she loves. She also happens to be pregnant, which adds yet another layer of peril to the ordeal she and the others must face alone.

    Tragedy after tragedy on this remote shore changes Marguerite; there is nothing she can do to stop it. She is no longer the naive girl who once lived in wealth and took pride in her title. Now she must bury the people she loves, hunt with a rifle she never learned how to use, and become accustomed to a life of solitude.

    When, at last, she is rescued by a boat of fishermen, she is a different woman. She is a fearsome creature, set on vengeance, unafraid of her cousin, and stopping at nothing to achieve justice. She has had a “fresh start,” even if it is not something she pursued or something she would ever have wanted.

    Our lives might not be nearly as dramatic, but sometimes we face unexpected changes of our own, and they are unpleasant. We may find ourselves in circumstances we never would have chosen, forced to become people we never expected to be.

    Books teach us that we can survive this, too.

    3. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry — Gabrielle Zevin

    A.J. Fikry is not looking for a fresh start. In fact, by the beginning of Gabrielle Zevin’s The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, he seems to have given up on the possibility of one altogether. His wife is dead, his bookstore is struggling, and his beloved rare copy of Poe has been stolen. He has retreated into grief and bitterness, pushing away nearly everyone who might try to reach him.

    Then a two-year-old girl named Maya is left in his bookstore.

    A.J. initially has no idea what to do with this unexpected child, but before long, Maya begins to change his life. He adopts her, and the bookstore that once felt like an extension of his solitude becomes a place filled with people, stories, and community. His relationship with Amelia Loman, a publisher’s representative whom he initially treats rather terribly, grows into something more. Slowly, almost without his noticing, A.J. begins to build the life he thought he had lost forever.

    What I love about A.J.’s story is that his new beginning does not require him to become an entirely different person. He is still a bookseller. He still has his particular opinions about literature. He is still, in many ways, himself.

    But he is no longer alone.

    His fresh start comes through the people who enter his life unexpectedly and remind him that there are still things worth loving. Maya gives him someone to care for. Amelia gives him companionship. The bookstore becomes a place where he can belong rather than a place where he can hide.

    Sometimes starting over does not mean leaving everything behind. Sometimes it means allowing something new into the life you already have.

    A.J. Fikry learns that a life can be rewritten even after you are convinced the story has already ended.

    4- The Light on Farallon Island — Jen Wheeler

    Amelia Osborne arrives on the Farallon Islands in 1859 under a name that does not belong to her. Taking on the identity of her recently deceased friend, Lucy Riley, she has come to the remote lighthouse outpost as a teacher for the keepers’ children. It is the sort of place where a person might hope to disappear completely.

    Thirty miles off the coast of San Francisco, the Farallon Islands are isolated and forbidding. The sailors who know them call them the Devil’s Teeth, and Amelia soon discovers why. The cliffs are dangerous, the waters are unpredictable, and the fog can make the world beyond the island seem impossibly far away.

    For Amelia, though, the physical dangers are not the greatest threat. She has come to the island hoping to leave her old life behind, but she has brought its secrets with her.

    Then there is Will Sisson.

    Will is a solitary man who seems to recognize the name Amelia has taken, although he does not recognize her face. Naturally, she is wary of him. But as she becomes more familiar with the small community on the island, she begins to trust him. What follows is a story about love and fear, but also about the difficult process of becoming someone new when the person you were is still haunting you.

    I think The Light on Farallon Island fits this list because Amelia’s fresh start is, in many ways, a literal reinvention. She changes her name. She leaves the life she knew. She travels to a place where almost no one knows her.

    But changing your circumstances does not necessarily mean escaping your past. Amelia has gone as far as she possibly can, surrounded by nothing but sea, rocks, fog, and the people who live alongside her. Yet even there, she cannot escape herself.

    Sometimes a fresh start requires a new place.

    Sometimes it requires becoming brave enough to stay.

    5. Anne of Green Gables — L.M. Montgomery

    Of all the titles on this list, Anne of Green Gables might be the most hopeful. It is not only Anne Shirley who receives a fresh start when she is rescued from the orphanage. Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert receive one, too.

    The Cuthberts have been living for years and years in a state of routine, unwelcoming of change and with no intentions of changing their lifestyle. They are content, but are they happy?

    When Anne is accidentally brought to Green Gables rather than the boy they hoped for, it takes a little while for them to overcome the shock. After all, her personality is vastly different from theirs. But soon they realize that her monologues, drama, and garnishes make them happy. Happiness is not something they have known for a very long time.

    Sometimes, like in The Enchanted April, a fresh start does not announce itself with trumpets and fanfare. Sometimes, like in Isola, it is forced growth of character. In the case of Anne of Green Gables, it takes the form of irresistible wonder. This sort of fresh start makes the world beautiful to behold, even to those watching from the sidelines.

    Anne loves Avonlea and sees magic in every cranny. Soon, Matthew and Marilla begin to see it, too—and to change.

    Perhaps that is one of the loveliest things about a fresh start: sometimes it does not only change the person beginning again. Sometimes it changes everyone fortunate enough to be there when it happens.

    Starting Again

    There is something comforting about stories of fresh starts because they remind us that our lives are rarely as settled as they seem.

    Marguerite never would have chosen the island. A.J. Fikry never expected a little girl to walk into his bookstore and change everything. Amelia went to Farallon Island hoping that a new name might allow her to leave her old life behind. And Anne Shirley arrived at Green Gables without knowing that she was about to change the lives of Matthew and Marilla along with her own.

    Even The Enchanted April, perhaps the gentlest of these stories, shows us that sometimes all we need is the opportunity to see our lives differently.

    I think that is what I love most about a fresh start in literature. It does not always mean becoming an entirely new person. Sometimes it means discovering a part of ourselves that had been waiting for the right circumstances to emerge.

    We cannot always choose when our lives will change. Sometimes change arrives as an adventure. Sometimes it comes through loss. Sometimes it appears on the doorstep in the form of a little girl who was supposed to be a boy.

    But there is always the possibility that something beautiful might come of it.

    Perhaps that is why we return to these stories when we need encouragement. They remind us that the ending of one chapter does not necessarily mean the end of the story.

    There may still be another life waiting for us.

    Cover Image: Woman Reading (1880), Edouard Manet

    If you enjoyed this little collection of stories about beginning again, you can buy the Tearoom a coffee here. It helps me keep the kettle warm and the books coming.

  • How to Choose Your Next Book

    How to Choose Your Next Book


    Only a reader would understand this problem: you’ve just finished a novel that you absolutely adored. You’ve allowed it to simmer for a bit while completing the household chores that can’t keep being ignored. When you’re finally finished, you go to your favorite spot in the house: your bookshelf.

    Staring at the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of options lined up on the shelves before you, you feel that familiar hesitation.

    I have so many books, you think, but I don’t know what to read next!

    We seem to live with the idea that, because we love books, there should never be any uncertainty about what our next title will be. But when there are so many lovely directions in which we can go, it can genuinely be difficult to pick just one and commit to it. The more options we have, the harder it becomes to reach that satisfying moment of thinking, Yes. That’s the one.

    I haven’t completely solved this problem for myself, but I’ve learned a few things that make the decision easier. So if you’re standing before your own bookshelf right now, feeling overwhelmed by all those unread possibilities and thinking the same dramatic thought—I don’t know what to read next!—here are a few ways to find your way back to a book.

    Don’t Think in Numbers

    We might not want to admit it, but when we’re thinking about our next read, we can start subconsciously calculating.

    If I read these two novels this week, then cram that epic in the week after, and squeeze in this novella after that, I’ll cross more off my list than if I simply reach for what I actually want to read…

    The point of reading isn’t to get through all the books on your shelf. The point is to find a story and allow it to carry you away, for a while, from the hardships of life.

    Let’s face it: plenty of people have impressive personal libraries. Ask them how many of those books they’ve actually read, though, and they’ll probably admit that there are quite a few waiting patiently on the shelves. Some of them may never be read at all.

    And that’s okay.

    If you’re constantly trying to get through everything you own, you’re probably taking much of the fun out of reading itself. If opening a book becomes another mark to check off a list, what’s the difference between choosing a novel and buying groceries?

    You don’t need to optimize your reading life.

    Stop thinking in numbers and goals, and you may find that choosing your next book becomes much easier. Instead of asking yourself which book will help you make the most progress, ask a simpler question:

    Which one do I actually want to read?

    That answer is probably closer than you think.

    Look for the Story Your Soul Needs

    Sometimes, the book that is currently trending is not the story that your soul needs in that moment.

    There are a lot of performative readers on the Internet who seem to grab whatever is trending simply because everyone else is reading it. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being excited about a popular book. Sometimes the books everyone is talking about really are wonderful. But you can’t always tell whether someone is enjoying a book because it genuinely speaks to them or because they feel as though they ought to be reading it.

    When choosing your next read, it’s more important to look for the story that might provide the particular kind of nourishment—or even healing—that your soul needs. Read the description of the story and ask yourself: Is it dealing with friendship? Might it have words of wisdom about coping with grief? Does it have literary sunshine to give life to a winter day?

    Maybe you need a love story. Maybe you need to laugh. Maybe you need to spend a few hours with a woman who has made a mess of her life and somehow manages to put the pieces back together. Maybe you need to disappear into another country, another century, or another person’s imagination.

    Your reading life doesn’t have to reflect what everyone else is reading. It doesn’t even have to reflect what you were reading last month.

    Sometimes we reach for the book that will challenge us. Sometimes we need the one that will comfort us. Sometimes we need a story that simply reminds us that there is still beauty in the world.

    Pay attention to that instinct.

    The book you need most may not be the book everyone is recommending. It may be the one that has been sitting quietly on your shelf, waiting for you to become the reader who is ready for it.

    Read the First Page

    Most literary agents will tell you that, when you submit a novel for publication, the first—and often the only—part they will look at is the first page. This is because a book’s opening bears a great deal of weight. Regardless of genre, POV, or tense, the first page should give the reader a reason to keep going.

    Take, for example, these wonderful first-page hooks:

    “The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.” —The Secret History, Donna Tartt

    “I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.” —The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls

    “This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.” — The Princess Bride, William Goldman

    For more great hooks, read this post.

    Literary agents and editors have the right idea when they advise authors to make their opening lines special. I say this at the risk of sounding unkind to other writers who perhaps do not like being told how to write their novels, but it is what it is: we readers have so many options that, if an author wishes for their story to be chosen, they need to learn the gimmicks.

    There has to be a line, an idea, or an exchange in the first paragraph that makes me think, “Wait, what? I need to know more. How can Goldman say this is his favorite book if he’s never read it? Why is Bunny dead? Why is Mom rooting through a dumpster?”

    When picking your next read, allow yourself to be choosy. Go through your options, read the first pages of each, and pick the ones that grip you. It’s not necessary to toss aside books that don’t immediately arrest your attention; simply set them aside until the time is right.

    Read the Book You Keep Thinking About

    Sometimes, you already know what you want to read. You just haven’t admitted it to yourself yet.

    There may be a particular book on your shelf that you keep noticing. You pick it up, read the description again, admire the cover, and then put it back because you think you should read something else first. Perhaps it’s been sitting there for months. Perhaps you bought it years ago. Perhaps you’ve been telling yourself that you’ll get to it eventually.

    Why not now?

    Our reading lists can become so full of obligations that we forget to pay attention to the books that genuinely interest us. We tell ourselves we need to finish another book first, catch up on a bestseller, read something more “important,” or finally tackle the enormous classic we’ve been avoiding.

    But if you keep thinking about a particular book, there may be a reason.

    You don’t need to justify every reading choice. You don’t need to prove that you’ve chosen the most worthwhile book on your shelf. If one keeps catching your attention, pick it up. Read a few pages. See where it takes you.

    And if you discover that you’re not in the mood for it after all, you can always put it back.

    Conclusion

    Choosing your next book doesn’t have to be a complicated process. You don’t need a reading challenge, an elaborate TBR system, or a carefully calculated plan. Sometimes you simply need to stop and ask yourself what kind of story you’re longing for.

    Read for pleasure. Read for comfort. Read because a first page makes you curious. Read the book that has been quietly calling your name from the shelf.

    And remember that there is no wrong answer.

    The unread books will still be there tomorrow. Your reading life is not a race, and your bookshelf is not a list of obligations. You are allowed to wander through it, change your mind, abandon a book that isn’t right for you, and return to one when the time is better.

    So if you’re sitting there wondering what to read next, look at your shelves again.

    There’s probably a book waiting for you.

    If you’ve enjoyed this little corner of Her Reading Life, you can support my work by buying me a coffee here. It helps me keep writing, reading, and making more of these little literary things for you.

    And if you can’t, simply being here and reading means a great deal to me.

  • How to Read More Books (Without Making Reading Another Chore)

    How to Read More Books (Without Making Reading Another Chore)


    In my previous post, I addressed a problem that seems common among many adults: how to start reading again when new responsibilities threaten to crowd our leisure time. We discussed three ways to rekindle our love of reading and allow it to become the haven it once was.

    Now we turn to a different problem that is still in the same vein: how to read more books when life is already busy.

    There is nothing wrong with reading a handful of books per year, but some of us will not be satisfied with that. Some of us want the exhilarating sensation of reading volume after volume, visiting different places in the past and future, but cannot find a way to work such a goal into an already-busy schedule.

    Perhaps you’re struggling because you have a lot on your plate, and your TBR simply isn’t a priority. Perhaps you’re overwhelmed by the task of deciding what to read next. Or perhaps you’ve fallen into the trap of thinking that reading more requires some elaborate system of its own.

    The good news is that it doesn’t have to.

    If you want to read more books, these simple changes may help you build a reading life that feels satisfying rather than demanding.

    Stop Treating Your TBR Like a Syllabus

    I’ve fallen into this trap before: I’ll have a nice collection of books growing on my shelf, but my conscience tells me that I cannot read them except in the order in which they were acquired.

    To an extent, this might make sense. A person with common sense might think that we should read books as soon as they are bought; if not, did we really want them to begin with?

    But a TBR is not a syllabus.

    You do not have to start at the top of the stack and work your way down. You are allowed to skip around. You are allowed to read the book you are suddenly in the mood for, even if you bought it six months ago and have five others waiting ahead of it.

    In fact, I think this is one of the simplest ways to make reading more enjoyable: let yourself choose.

    Your TBR should be a collection of possibilities, not a list of assignments. There is no prize for finishing the books in chronological order, and there is certainly no reason to feel guilty about being more excited about the book at the bottom of the stack.

    Read the book that calls to you.

    Your future reading self will thank you for it.

    Keep More Than One Book Going

    Everybody has a different reading style, so this advice will not apply to everyone. Personally, I think it is perfectly fine to read more than one book at a time. Keep bookmarks at hand and have a different adventure waiting for you in every room of the house.

    You might think this advice is counterproductive. After all, how can we ever finish a single novel if there are five others waiting to be read? But in my experience, books naturally follow their own timelines. A short, 130-page novel might take you a year to finish, while you might tear through a third of an epic fantasy in a matter of hours.

    The point isn’t necessarily to have a great many books going at once. It is to trust the reading process itself. Different books will call to you at different times, and the one you have been neglecting for weeks might suddenly become the only one you want to read.

    When that happens, let it.

    Rather than dragging yourself through a book simply because you started it, you may find that giving yourself several stories to move between actually helps you read more. One book might suit your morning coffee, another your lunch break, and another the quiet half-hour before bed. You are not abandoning one story for another; you are allowing your reading life to have different moods.

    And sometimes, almost without realizing it, you’ll find yourself finishing books faster than you would have if you had insisted on reading only one at a time.

    Put Your Phone Somewhere Inconvenient

    I realize, as I type this, that this probably should have been the first tip in a post like this. But it doesn’t apply only to reading. Our creative pursuits are threatened by our phones just as much as they are, in some ways, aided by them.

    A phone gives us access to endless sources of inspiration, helps us meet other creatives with similar worldviews, and even allows us to sell our work to people who are interested in it. But it is far too easy to spend an hour building Pinterest boards instead of reading the novel sitting beside us—or writing the story we built the board for in the first place.

    If you like using your phone to take notes about the stories you read, give yourself a timer for these little rituals. Ten minutes should be plenty of time to fill a Google Doc with “margin notes” that you can later use for a review. Three minutes should be more than enough to update your Goodreads status.

    Reading time ought to be hallowed time.

    Use your phone for the necessities: work, keeping in touch with loved ones, finding directions when you need to get somewhere. But when it is time to curl up with your latest cozy mystery, put the phone somewhere inconvenient. Leave it across the room. Put it in another room entirely.

    If you want to read more books—and actually remember them when you’re finished—you have to give your attention somewhere else to go.

    Try Shorter Books When You’re Stuck

    I have recently discovered the great power that can be found in shorter books. Some of my favorite reads this year have been short enough to finish in a single sitting. Novellas, essays, short story collections—all of these absolutely count when you’re trying to overcome a reading slump.

    If you’re not sure where to start with shorter novels, I recommend Whale Fall by Elizabeth O’Connor and Hello Baby by Kim Eui-Kyung. Both can be read in an afternoon; both are atmospheric and immediately draw us away from the world in which we live. And I feel the need to add: both are incredibly deep.

    Some people seem to fear that a shorter novel won’t give us as much to mull over. But more pages do not necessarily mean more profound lessons about morality, life, or the human condition. A story does not become more meaningful simply because it takes longer to tell.

    I’ve always thought that a tale that can be told as briefly as possible and still captivate its listeners is a story being told at its purest.

    Make Reading a Part of Your Life Again

    Ultimately, I don’t think the goal of reading more books should be to make ourselves more productive readers. Books are not another item on the list of things we ought to accomplish before the end of the day. They are one of the few places left where we can allow ourselves to be completely absorbed in something that asks nothing of us in return.

    If you want to read more, give yourself permission to make reading easier. Choose the book you actually want to read. Keep several stories within reach. Put your phone somewhere you cannot see it. Pick up something short when a long novel feels impossible.

    Most importantly, don’t turn your reading life into another obligation.

    There will be seasons when you read dozens of books and seasons when you barely finish one. There will be books you abandon, books you carry around for months, and books you devour in a single afternoon. All of it counts.

    The wonderful thing about building a reading life is that there is always another story waiting for you. You only have to open the book.

    Cover Image: Old Woman Reading a Newspaper (1895), Paul Knight

    If you enjoyed this essay and would like to buy the Tearoom a little coffee, you can leave a tip here. It helps me keep making a cozy corner of the internet for readers like you.

  • 5 Novels that Felt Like Romantic Holidays

    5 Novels that Felt Like Romantic Holidays


    There is a certain kind of novel that sweeps you away on the sort of holiday that can be nothing short of magical.

    These are the books that transport us somewhere beautiful: perhaps to another time, through the streets of a foreign city, into a little village we wish existed, or even to a slower, more peaceful version of life. They might have been written long ago, or they might follow modern travelers as they explore ancient monuments and discover unfamiliar cultures.

    When a novel like this is written well, it carries you along with it. The setting becomes almost as important as the story itself. A house you’ve never visited can begin to feel like home. A village you’ve never seen can take on the familiarity of somewhere you’ve always known. For a few hours, reading becomes a kind of travel.

    Those are the books I think of as literary holidays.

    I’ve encountered several such novels over the years, and now that we’re entering September—our summer holidays winding to a close, our cardigans coming back out of the wardrobe—these are the sorts of books that can help us hold on to a little of that holiday magic.

    Because those of us who love reading know the particular magic that occurs when a book truly transports us. We close the cover and may be surprised to find that we are exactly where we started, sitting in a comfortable chair or tucked beneath the covers in bed.

    But for a little while, we’ve been somewhere else entirely.

    Here are five books that have given me that feeling—five literary escapes for anyone who isn’t quite ready to come home from holiday.

    1. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

    In this life, different souls could hardly be more opposed to one another, whether in personality, temperament, or belief.

    The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim has a simple premise on the surface, but beneath it lies something that many women will recognize at one point or another: the need to escape from a life that has become too difficult, too confusing, or too stifled by expectations imposed by other people.

    In The Enchanted April, four very different women find themselves drawn together by the possibility of escape. They agree to rent a medieval castle in Italy, each expecting that she will largely keep to herself. They certainly have no intention of getting too involved in one another’s lives.

    But some places have a way of overpowering even our strongest prejudices.

    As the women settle into their beautiful Italian surroundings, the atmosphere of the castle and the warmth of spring begin to work their quiet magic. This peaceful, atmospheric novel gradually reveals the things its characters have in common, even when they initially have very little patience for one another.

    By the end, these four women have discovered that sometimes we need to leave our ordinary lives behind before we can see them—and ourselves—with new eyes.

    Read this if: you want an atmospheric, escapist novel about women, friendship, and the restorative magic of getting away from it all.

    2. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

    There are few books that make travel feel quite as romantic as A Room with a View by E. M. Forster. Florence becomes more than a setting here; it feels like a doorway into a different way of living, one in which beauty, spontaneity, and the possibility of love might matter more than following the rules you’ve been given.

    Lucy Honeychurch arrives in Italy constrained by the expectations of the people around her, but her travels begin to open up something in her that she hadn’t quite known was there. Away from the familiar routines and conventions of home, she begins to see that another kind of life might be possible.

    I love the feeling of possibility in this novel—the sense that sometimes going somewhere unfamiliar can help you see your own life differently. It is a book about Italy and Florence, certainly, but it is also a romantic story about independence, self-discovery, and allowing yourself to want something more.

    Read this if: you want Florence, romance, beautiful scenery, and the feeling that a trip might change your life.

    3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

    Before cell phones and Instagram existed to prove that a holiday had taken place, there were letters. I’ve always thought that letter novels were inherently romantic, even when the stories themselves weren’t necessarily romantic.

    The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows is an epistolary novel told entirely through letters, beginning in the aftermath of World War II. It follows Juliet Ashton, a writer who has become famous for a humorous column that entertained readers during the war but who now dreams of writing something bigger and more substantial.

    When Juliet learns of a book club that sprang to life during the German occupation of the island of Guernsey—a literary refuge that brought comfort to its members under extraordinarily difficult circumstances—she becomes fascinated by the people behind it. Before long, she finds herself traveling to Guernsey to learn more about their lives and their remarkable wartime book club.

    What begins as a literary investigation becomes something much more personal. On Guernsey, Juliet discovers friendship, unexpected affection, and perhaps even the story she has been looking for all along.

    There is something especially charming about a novel that brings you to an island through letters. You never quite stop feeling as though you’ve been invited into someone else’s correspondence, and Guernsey becomes a place you can almost imagine wandering through yourself.

    Read this if: you want an atmospheric historical novel filled with books, letters, friendship, romance, and the irresistible feeling of discovering a place through the people who love it.

    4. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

    Not every literary holiday requires a train ticket or a passport. Sometimes all you need is a garden.

    Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden has always felt to me like the sort of book that creates its own little world. Mary Lennox arrives at Misselthwaite Manor in Yorkshire after being sent away from India, lonely and thoroughly unaccustomed to the quiet of the English countryside. There, she begins to discover the secrets of the great house—including a locked garden that has been left untouched for years.

    As Mary becomes increasingly fascinated by the garden and the people around her, the landscape begins to change, and so does she. There is something wonderfully restorative about watching a neglected place slowly come back to life alongside the children who care for it.

    This is perhaps the most fanciful literary holiday on my list, but that is exactly why I love it. The Secret Garden makes the English countryside feel like somewhere you could disappear into for a while—a place of hidden paths, changing seasons, fresh air, and possibilities waiting behind a locked door.

    Read this if: you want an enchanting classic about secret gardens, the English countryside, friendship, and the quiet magic of discovering a world of your own.

    5. The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George

    The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George is exactly the kind of novel that makes me want to disappear into a bookshop, buy a train ticket, and see what happens.

    As I remember it, the story follows Jean Perdu, a bookseller with a remarkable instinct for knowing which books might help people through whatever they’re experiencing. He lives aboard a floating bookshop in Paris, and eventually sets off on a journey through France that gives him the chance to reckon with an old heartbreak and consider what might come next.

    It has been years since I read this one, so some of the finer details have become pleasantly hazy in my memory—and that is part of why I’m looking forward to reading it again. What I seem to remember most is the feeling of it: Paris, books, waterways, food, and the possibility of beginning again.

    In my memory, it feels like a literary holiday in the broadest sense. Not simply a story about falling in love, but a story about rediscovering the world after you’ve been closed off from it for too long.

    I’m curious to see what remains when I meet this book again.

    Read this if: you want France, books, travel, and a story about finding your way back to life.

    Take Yourself on a Literary Holiday

    A literary holiday doesn’t necessarily require summer weather, a suitcase, or even leaving the house. Sometimes all it takes is a novel that knows how to make another place feel real.

    As September arrives and the days begin to grow a little shorter, I find myself wanting to hold on to that feeling of summer travel for just a little longer. These books offer their own kind of escape, taking us to Italy, Florence, Guernsey, France, and the English countryside without asking us to go any farther than our favorite chair.

    There is something comforting about knowing that the holiday can continue in this way. We can close the book, return to our ordinary lives, and still carry a little of its world with us.

    So if you’re looking for something to read as summer gives way to autumn, consider taking a literary holiday of your own. Choose a book that promises somewhere beautiful, settle in, and let it carry you away for a while.

    After all, September may be the month when we come home, but there is no reason we have to come home all at once.

    A Little Cup of Tea

    If you’ve enjoyed coming along on these literary holidays, and you’d like to help me keep making them, you can always buy me a coffee. It helps support the time I spend reading, writing, and making little corners of the internet for bookish people to settle into.

    No pressure at all—your company here is already lovely. But if you’d like to leave a little something behind for the next cup of tea, I’ll be very grateful.

  • Hello Baby: The Women in the Chatroom

    Hello Baby: The Women in the Chatroom


    Books Cross Borders and Cultures

    Translated from Korean, Hello Baby is my eighty-fifth read of the year. It’s a book laden with heavy but relevant topics, particularly to women.

    It follows the lives of seven women of different walks of life and social classes who have one very important thing in common: they have long wanted to be mothers, but for different reasons, are unable to make this dream come true. Ages ranging from 37 to 46, they keep in touch in a private chat called Hello Baby.

    They are all seeking treatment at Baby Angel Hospital, which is packed with couples hoping to start their families, even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the first thing a reader notices in Hello Baby is the huge amount of pressure that settles on the woman.

    Why So Much Shame?

    The first character that we meet is 44-year-old Mun-Jeong, a journalist. In the opening scene, she is having her temperature checked by a nurse at Baby Angel, preparing to go downstairs to the IVF clinic.

    She is going to the clinic alone, always alone. The reason seems so petty to me: in the past, her husband ran into an acquaintance of his while escorting her. Since then, Mun-Jeong has endured hormone treatments on her own, because her husband was overcome with shame at having been recognized in such a place. He will only attend with her if his presence is absolutely necessary.

    Mun-Jeong often returns to the deep insult implied by his attitude, asking:

    Was low fertility really so shameful among men? Why did they have to be so caught up in their own egos when it came to the sanctity of creating life?

    I won’t attempt to answer that question. I’ll just let it sit.

    Women Can Love Two Vocations at Once

    Mun-Jeong also struggles with the (unfortunately) still-real expectation that, if the treatment does work, she would be expected to quit her work as a journalist and stay home.

    Even if she managed to get pregnant, Mun-Jeong intended to keep writing for the magazine right up until she went into labor.

    She loves her work as a journalist, relishing each interview, each achievement—yet it makes her wonder: are a husband and children the biggest obstacle to a woman’s success? It seems that Baby Angel ought to cause her more trepidation. The woman who walks into that clinic has more to lose, either way.

    Yet her husband was spooked because he crossed paths with an acquaintance.

    A Confession—Not an Apology

    It’s true that I do not have children, but this book made me think: Surely, there is no right way these days.

    Some women choose to live lives without children, and they have various, valid reasons for it. But if a woman’s dream is to be a mother, and for some reason this cannot occur naturally, the process of conceiving with medical help can be frightening and lonely.

    Hello Baby is not a long read, but it does a fantastic job of exposing the various wounds that a woman, unsupported, would endure throughout it.

    Some of these situations would clearly be far worse in the culture that is described in Hello Baby, but we can’t pretend that people do not still frown at one’s children—or lack thereof; that workplace equality truly exists everywhere, particularly when a family is involved.

    There is also always pressure from someone—in the family or just society—for a woman to want children. I know, because I’ve experienced it. Children are not in my plans at this moment, perhaps ever. It doesn’t mean I don’t like them, or think that they’re wonderful for people called to them.

    Including a character in Hello Baby called Seol-yu, a 40-year-old housewife who has “done everything right.” She has a pair of young twins that she loves. Now, she’s expecting a third baby.

    Due to financial issues, she must work, but does not know where to find childcare—so she asks her mother. Her mother’s help lasts a very short time:

    To Seol-yu’s surprise, her mother started crying.
    “I can’t do it anymore,” she said. “If I keep this up, my cancer’s going to come back.”

    Childcare…will make cancer come back? Okay.

    The Real vs. Fake Baby

    Then there’s Jeong-hyo, who married into a wealthy family where her mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law expect her to have children to pass on the family line. She also has a personal desire for children, but is unable to conceive naturally.

    The first time she met her husband’s grandmother, the older woman’s words were:

    “You look fertile. Your shoulders are round, and your hips are wide. You seem docile, but you’ve got sex appeal.”

    Awkward, but it can’t mean that much…right?

    Jeong-hyo’s been trying, and trying, and trying for years for a baby. But by the end of Hello Baby, after an ectopic pregnancy and the removal of a fallopian tube, Jeong-hyo’s mother-in-law chooses to “comfort” her on the way home:

    “You have to hurry up and put this behind you so the new baby can come. … If you keep thinking about the baby you lost, then the real baby won’t come.”

    To which Jeong-hyo finally snaps:

    “Don’t you ever say that to me again. … What right do you have to say whether my baby is real or pretend?”

    It’s My Village, Too

    As a woman without children, I felt many times while drafting this post that I have no voice in the matter, either way. But I have friends with children who are very happy, and childfree friends who are also at peace with their lives. And I recognize when an important, powerful book needs to be shared.

    The burden of parenthood should not be carried by a woman alone. A woman should not be obligated to renounce her passions when she wants a family. And matriarchs—or husbands—should not see a woman only for the children she might have.

    Also, she should have friends who understand her.

    Friendship is the source of strength and light in this novel. The ladies in the Hello Baby chatroom encourage one another, offer advice, commiserate, and celebrate together. They understand things about one another that the people closest to them sometimes cannot, because they are living through the same complicated mixture of hope, disappointment, fear, and expectation.

    Seven Shoulders to Cry On

    There is something especially beautiful about the fact that these women find one another through a shared struggle, but their friendship becomes about much more than whether they will become mothers. They see one another as whole people. In a novel so concerned with the ways women can be reduced to their bodies, their fertility, or their usefulness to a family, the Hello Baby chatroom gives them somewhere to simply be women together.

    This might be what I loved most about Hello Baby. The answer to all of this pressure is not that women should make the same choices. It is that women should have the freedom to make their own choices—and the friendship and support to know that they do not have to face the consequences of those choices alone.

    Hello Baby has quickly found its way into my top ten favorite books of the year. It has also reminded me why I want to seek out more international fiction. There is something wonderful about reading beyond the borders of your own culture—about entering another country’s stories and allowing a novel to complicate, illuminate, or simply broaden the way you see the world.

    I’m looking forward to making more room on my reading list for translated fiction and discovering the many voices beyond my own literary landscape.

  • No One Disappears on an Island: Thoughts on Remote Literary Settings

    No One Disappears on an Island: Thoughts on Remote Literary Settings


    Soon it would be another memory, those things and times and places and people one could never reclaim, yet never be rid of either. A feeling that would fade and flicker back to brightness, subject to her will, but that could never be undone or erased.

    The Light on Farallon Island, p. 345

    The Light on Farallon Island by Jen Wheeler was a gripping read that offered readers much to think about. Amelia lost her family a long time ago in a horrific accident caused by a hateful father. Amelia alone escaped, and has done odd jobs in order to survive, one of which leads her to the remote Farallon Islands in the San Francisco area, a place so isolated at the time that the arrival of a newcomer is the subject of much surprise and gossip.

    Amelia has an additional secret that she can’t even escape on the Farallons. Before arriving, she had fallen in love with a woman named Lucy. When a terrible fire ravages their home while Amelia is gone, reducing poor Lucy to ashes, Amelia at once enters survival mode. She had not seen anyone in Lucy’s social group, and no one knows her — she plans to leave anyway — so she takes Lucy’s name and some of her belongings; in her mind, Amelia Osbourne is dead.

    But one person exists who will not be so easily fooled by this ruse: Lucy’s brother, Will Sisson. He will demand answers from Amelia relentlessly, but before long, he will fall for her — before he even learns what her name is — while he still knows her only as a woman with a very compelling past.

    The Trope of “Hayworth House”

    Upon arriving at Farallon, Amelia is given for shelter a place called Stonehouse. It stands as “a simple, flat-faced structure made of… a mosaic of granite blocks quarried on the island. Its patchwork facade recalled a fairy cottage, but its form reflected perfect symmetry. A chimney capped each end of the gabled roof.” This is to be Amelia’s home as she lives on remote Farallon as a teacher to the handful of children living on that lonely place.

    Is Stonehouse haunted? Previous owners of the place report strange apparitions, such as a woman veiled in black. Even if these stories are true, Amelia’s experiences have taught her not to fear a lost spirit, but a living man who can do bodily harm.

    As a novel, The Light on Farallon Island succeeds most strongly in its atmosphere. Wheeler makes the Farallons feel genuinely cut off from the mainland, a place where news arrives slowly and the small community knows nearly everything about its inhabitants. That isolation gives the novel its Gothic quality without requiring the supernatural to carry the story.

    Amelia herself is also an effective protagonist because her desire to disappear is never quite as simple as it first appears. She has come to the island to escape her past, but the novel gradually asks whether escape and reinvention are actually the same thing. I did find some of the mystery elements more familiar than surprising, but the setting and emotional stakes kept me invested. The result is a novel that is less frightening for its ghosts than for its understanding of how difficult it is to outrun the past.

    There were many elements in this novel that made me think about great works of Gothic fiction that we all know and love, in particular the great novels of the Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. Wheeler’s novel takes place on an island both remote and atmospheric. It is the ideal breeding ground for ghost stories and superstition.

    Off the Grid Drama

    It also reminded me of a novella written more recently, Whale Fall by Elizabeth O’Connor. Set on a remote Welsh island of fishermen, there is a similar sense of it being separated as though it were another world. Updates of the ongoing war against Hitler reach them very slowly. They, too, live lives that honor their own gods and traditions. O’Connor and Wheeler both use words to create the kinds of communities one could go to if they wished to disappear and become someone entirely new.

    Do such places still exist today? Could it still be possible to live “off the grid,” creating a self-sufficient community far from the wars and struggles of real life?

    Bronson Alcott, father of Louisa May Alcott, tried something like this when his young daughters were very young. It was called Fruitlands. Alcott, a radical Transcendentalist and author, and an English associate named Charles Lane attempted to establish a community in Harvard, Massachusetts. Lane purchased roughly ninety acres of farmland, and in June of 1843, the Alcotts were among the first families to move there.

    Alcott and Lane were obsessed with an idea: what if human beings could strip away the corrupting habits of ordinary society and return to a more innocent, spiritual, natural way of life? Fruitlands was imagined as a sort of earthly Eden, and their commitment to living simply was extreme:

    • They pursued a strict plant-based diet and rejected animal products.
    • They rejected the use of animal labor, including animals for plowing the fields.
    • They tried to minimize dependence on the outside economy and live as self-sufficiently as possible.
    • Lane advocated increasingly severe forms of self-denial, eventually including celibacy within marriage.

    The experiment, unsurprisingly, proved much harder to sustain than its ideals suggested. Farming was difficult, crops failed, supplies became scarce, and the community struggled financially. Fruitlands collapsed after about seven months, and the Alcotts left in January 1844. The failure was painful for Bronson, both financially and emotionally, though he continued to pursue his philosophical and educational ideals afterward.

    Later, Louisa satirized the experiment in Transcendental Wild Oats, her fictionalized account of Fruitlands. She remembered the community with both affection and irony, poking fun at the gulf between its lofty ideals and the practical realities of keeping a family fed and functioning. At one point she jokes that “Apple Slump” might have been a better name for the place, playing on the monotonous and sometimes meager food available to the community.

    Louisa and “Apple Slump”

    Louisa had witnessed firsthand the gap between an idealized community and the messy reality of actually living in one. She was a child when the Alcott family went to Fruitlands, but the experience clearly stayed with her. Years later, she could look back on it with enough distance to find the humor in what had once been a very real hardship.

    That humor is part of what makes her story, Transcendental Wild Oats, so charming. Louisa did not simply mock her father and his ideals; she understood the impulse behind them. She knew what it meant to believe that the world could be made better if people were only willing to live differently. But she also knew that lofty principles become considerably more complicated when there are hungry children to feed and crops that refuse to grow.

    Her “Apple Slump” joke captures that perfectly. Fruitlands was supposed to be an earthly Eden, a place where human beings could escape the corruptions of ordinary society and live according to higher principles. Yet Eden, as it turned out, involved a great deal of difficult farming and not nearly enough food. The joke is funny because it brings the whole grand experiment back down to earth: transcendental philosophy is one thing, but eventually somebody has to figure out what everyone is having for dinner.

    Louisa remembered Fruitlands with both affection and irony. She could see the beauty in her father’s dream without pretending that the dream had worked. And perhaps that is what connects Fruitlands to the remote islands in these novels: people may go somewhere isolated hoping to escape the world’s troubles, or even to become someone entirely new, but isolation does not make a place perfect.

    People bring themselves with them. They bring their loves, their griefs, their secrets, their prejudices, their hopes. Someone may arrive hoping to disappear, while someone else is waiting to find them.

    It is never perfect.

    Hidden in the Fog

    What makes the Farallons such an effective setting for Wheeler’s story? Could it be the remoteness?

    After all, Amelia goes there believing she can leave her old life behind. The island is remote enough to make reinvention seem possible, but it cannot erase what she has lost, nor can it protect her from the complications of being human. The ghosts of Stonehouse may or may not be real, but Amelia already knows that the most dangerous things we carry with us are not always supernatural.

    Sometimes they are memories. Sometimes they are grief. Sometimes they are the identities we thought we had buried.

    She may have gone to the Farallons to disappear, but the island gives her something quite different: a place where she must finally decide whether a new life means becoming someone else, or learning to live with the person she has always been.

  • You Don’t Actually Have to Finish the Book

    You Don’t Actually Have to Finish the Book


    A Crisis of Bookish Morality

    When a reader becomes accustomed to devouring novels over the course of hours, it becomes something of an expectation that every book which sounds promising will have the same effect. When we come across a story that does not immediately grip us in the way we hoped it would, we begin to feel oddly guilty.

    It must be something wrong with me, we think. Perhaps I’m too tired, or I missed an important paragraph, or maybe it’s the insomnia…

    I understand the impulse to make excuses. I’ve done so myself, because there is a soft voice inside me that tells me I am committing a sin by putting down a book I expected to love.

    Somewhere out there, after all, an author put a great deal of work into this very novel.

    Being an author myself, I have an instinct to give them a chance. I find myself asking: What if it were my novel? How would I feel if someone gave up thirty pages in?

    As I’ve gotten older, however, I have come to realize that time is limited. Each book is written, after all, for someone. I might not be the person for the book I am holding, but someone else might be—and surely they will write a generous review making this known.

    Life is short, and I am doing no favors to myself—or, frankly, to the novel—by forcing myself through a story that hasn’t gripped me by page 100.

    No, You Don’t Have to Finish the Novel

    I want to say this to you gently, but firmly: you are under no obligation to force yourself through a novel when you clearly are not its intended reader.

    I don’t particularly enjoy science fiction. Very rarely do I encounter a sci-fi novel that I genuinely enjoy, so I tend to avoid those shelves when I go to the bookstore.

    That doesn’t mean I look at science fiction with disdain. I know there have been brilliant authors working within the genre, authors who have built much-deserved followings. I know that, for the right reader, a sci-fi novel, a slasher horror, or a romantasy might be the best thing they’ve ever read.

    My preference does not diminish the impact those books might have on someone else—or on the literary world.

    But, friends: I don’t have to read them.

    They’re doing perfectly well in their own corners of the literary universe. They do not need me to force myself through them in order to be validated.

    Lately, I’ve been struggling with the mentality of but I don’t want to hurt the book’s feelings.

    No, Mariella.

    This book is going to have plenty of readers.

    Maybe sooner or later, you’ll return to it, and it will be the time. Your time to enjoy fanfic aboard the Enterprise, perhaps. Or maybe even a monster romance.

    Today is not the day, and that’s okay. There is a literal pile of books behind you that you already know are made for you.

    I don’t have to finish the book, at least not today. Neither do you.

    The Book Will Survive

    There is a strange sort of morality we sometimes attach to reading. We talk about finishing books as though perseverance itself makes us better readers—as though putting down a novel halfway through is a failure of character.

    But a book is not a moral obligation.

    You are allowed to admit that something isn’t for you. You are allowed to close the cover, place it back on the shelf, and move on without writing a lengthy defense of your decision. You do not have to apologize to the author. You do not have to wonder whether you simply weren’t intelligent enough, patient enough, or disciplined enough to understand what everyone else seems to love.

    Perhaps you simply didn’t love it.

    And that’s enough.

    The book will survive. Somewhere, someone is going to pick it up and find exactly what you could not. They may devour it in a single evening. They may press it into the hands of their friends. They may call it one of the best books they have ever read.

    Good for them.

    Meanwhile, there are books waiting for you.

    Books you will stay up too late reading. Books you will carry from room to room. Books that will make you forget to check your phone, miss your bus stop, or sit in the driveway for ten extra minutes because you simply cannot bear to stop reading yet.

    You don’t owe every book your time.

    But when you find the right one, you may find yourself giving it gladly.

  • A Well-Read Woman is Not a Snob

    A Well-Read Woman is Not a Snob


    A Gift Card Will Be Fine

    As a woman, have you ever felt a little out of place when telling someone that your idea of a vacation is curling up in bed with a paperback? Have you ever had the sensation that few other women exist who are willing to engage in the kind of conversation you crave?

    Or perhaps you have felt that particular twinge of guilt when someone gifted you makeup or perfume, when what you really wanted was the latest Kristin Hannah novel. But you cannot exactly say that without hurting their feelings. They thought of you, after all, and I am a firm believer that it is the thought that counts.

    There can be a real impulse to apologize for being different, as if one is somehow failing at being a woman—or, perhaps, that everything about us is merely performative. Loving books, living for books, and talking about books might make us appear, to the rest of the world, a little pretentious. A little strange. Maybe even a snob.

    I am here to tell you—at least in most cases—that a well-read woman is not a snob.

    A Well-Read Woman Is Not a Snob

    What, exactly, is a snob? A quick look at the dictionary offers the following definition:

    snob (noun): a person with an exaggerated respect for high social position or wealth who seeks to associate with social superiors and looks down on those regarded as socially inferior.

    Reader, where in this definition can you find a link between the bona fide snob and a woman who simply wants to read—to read, and nothing else?

    I think that people who call such women snobbish are often bothered by some of the behaviors that come along with being a devoted reader.

    In my case, at least, I do not necessarily “seek to associate with social superiors.” As an introvert, I seldom want to associate with anyone at all. I do, however, want to engage in conversation with people who do not love the sound of their own voices so much that they will not allow me to use mine.

    Nor do I look down on those “regarded as socially inferior.” I do occasionally catch myself thinking about how much happier someone might be if they simply found The Novel—the book that could transport them from this world, answer all of their questions, and bring them peace. I am always looking for an opportunity to slide a book recommendation into the conversation.

    I did not study literature, so you cannot accuse me of snobbery born from some particular kind of education. In our scramble to define what makes someone “well-read,” I think we often complicate things. One becomes a well-read woman in a remarkably simple way: by picking up books and reading them.

    So why do we still get a bad rap?

    We Have Not Always Had the Luxury of Reading

    Perhaps part of the reason the well-read woman can still seem like an unusual creature is that, historically speaking, she is not nearly as ordinary as she ought to be.

    For much of history, literacy was not something equally available to everyone. Education was shaped by class, wealth, geography, and, of course, gender. A woman who wanted to spend her life reading was not always simply a woman with an interesting hobby. The ability to read—and, more importantly, the freedom to decide what one wished to read—was something generations of women had far less access to than we do today.

    The change has been remarkable. Globally, literacy rates have risen dramatically over the last several decades, and the expansion of literacy among women has been one of the defining parts of that progress. Yet even now, women account for nearly two-thirds of the world’s adults without basic literacy skills.

    So when I think about the modern woman who carries a novel in her purse, spends her evenings wandering through a bookstore, or answers every question about what she wants for Christmas with the name of another book, I do not see a snob.

    I see someone participating in a freedom that women before her could not always take for granted.

    In Defense of the Romance Novel

    These days, people may picture women reading and imagine a very specific form of novel: the romance novel. I’ve been asked by at least two guys whether I read “those romances” (you know the kind—the Sarah J. Maas flavor; while I don’t consider them to be my cup of tea, I don’t hate them, either).

    I do not agree with a lot of the things that take place in some of these romance novels, but I absolutely support a woman’s choice: if she wishes to read something like that, she has a right to. She also has the right to say no. What other people don’t have the right to do is assume that a woman reading a book on the subway couldn’t possibly be reading a five-hundred-page philosophical drama simply because she is a woman.

    This isn’t new. Many things associated with girls and women are demeaned by people who do not understand them: the color pink, lace on dresses, trips to the hairdresser. I can’t expand much on all of those things, but I’ve always had strong opinions about gatekeeping novels for women. So I, as a person who does not read romance novels, will defend them, and I will die on this hill.

    Does this make me a snob?

    Well—perhaps it does.

    What Is a Well-Read Woman?

    We have already established that a well-read woman is not a snob, simply because she chooses to spend her time reading. You might go on to ask what is a well-read woman? This is a vast question, worthy of its own post. But it is a matter I try to simplify if possible.

    A well-read woman is one who likes to read. She escapes the monotony of everyday life into novels of different lengths and density. Sometimes she writes margin notes; other times, she prefers to leave her books pristine like the day when she purchased them.

    A well-read woman doesn’t need to read 100 books to claim the title. She can read ten books instead and really read them—take notes, meditate on sentences, and use them to guide her through challenges in life.

    We do not need to graduate from anywhere to be a well-read woman. We simply need to find the books that ignite that passion, and be unapologetic about finding time to read them. We are not snobs. We gather sentences, moments of beauty, and are more than happy to share these things with people who ask.

    Snobs don’t do that.

    Lovers of literature do.

  • Tea with Deborah Svec-Carstens, Author of Toward the Light: A Year in Paris

    Tea with Deborah Svec-Carstens, Author of Toward the Light: A Year in Paris


    A Year in Paris, and the Story That Followed

    In 1992, Deborah Svec-Carstens was a young French major living in small-town Iowa, uncertain about what she wanted to do next. She had never been to France. Then an au pair position gave her an opportunity to change that.

    What followed was a year in Paris that would become far more complicated than she could have imagined—and, years later, the subject of a memoir.

    Toward the Light: A Year in Paris is the result of ten years of writing, revising, and querying. But Deborah’s story is about more than a young woman finding her way in a foreign city. It is also about loneliness and friendship, trauma and resilience, the complicated experience of belonging somewhere while remaining an outsider, and the long process of finding the courage to tell a difficult story.

    In our conversation, Deborah shares what life was actually like as an au pair in early-1990s Paris, why she chose to leave Iowa, how building a community helped her through an unexpectedly difficult year, and what it means to finally hold that experience in her hands as a finished book.

    She also talks about the writers and memoirs that have stayed with her—and offers some quietly powerful advice for anyone trying to tell a story of their own.

    Q: Prior to reading your memoir, I had only a vague sense of what being an au pair involved. Could you tell us a bit more about the experience?

    A: I went through a placement agency to find an au pair position in Paris. I can’t speak to the au pair experience today, but when I worked as an au pair in the early 1990s, the job entailed childcare and light housekeeping. I received a small monthly salary, plus room and board. 

    Each afternoon, I picked up Lily, the six-year-old girl I cared for, from school and entertained her until dinner time. We went to a nearby park or returned to the apartment for a snack, cartoons, and play time. I helped cook dinner and ate with the family. When my duties were done for the day, I would retreat to my chambre de bonne, a small room on the top floor of the apartment building where the family lived, or go out with friends. I would usually babysit at least one evening a week, sometimes more.

    French children don’t have school on Wednesdays. I spent the day with Lily and attended to my housekeeping duties, which included ironing, vacuuming, and dusting. Weekday mornings the rest of the week, I attended French language classes, first at the Sorbonne and later at Alliance Francaise.

    One of the most challenging parts of the job for me was being part of the family and an outsider at the same time. A few scenes in Toward the Light: A Year in Paris (available September 15) describe the initial difficulties that arose because of that dynamic. My relationship with Lily and her parents changed over the course of the year, due in part to shifting family dynamics, but also because of the sexual assault I experienced two months after my arrival, following a morning run. When I left Paris, I took with me both a love for Lily and a deep gratitude for her mother.

    Q: Tell us about your decision to leave home and spend time in France. What were the days and weeks leading up to your departure like?

    A: After graduating from college in the spring of 1992, I returned home to live with my parents in small-town Iowa, uncertain of what career path I wanted to follow. I returned to an administrative job at the company where my dad worked and continued to apply for a variety of jobs that I thought might fit my interests and background. Rejection letters piled up, and I decided to apply for an au pair job in Paris.

    I was a French major who had never been to France. An au pair position would provide the opportunity to live in Paris, improve my French, and make enough money to get by. I saw it as the only viable option for living abroad, and a chance to step back and think about the direction I wanted my career to take.

    I left Iowa within weeks of accepting the position. Those weeks were filled with excitement and nervousness, as I shared the news with family and friends. Not until I was on the plane to Paris did the gravity of my decision finally hit. I would be living in a city, in a country, where I’d never been. I didn’t know anyone there.

    I could never have predicted that my year in Paris would turn out to be one of the most challenging periods of my life.

    Q: Do you think your experience would have been different if you had chosen to do this today?

    A: My initial experience of loneliness would likely have been different because of the technology available today. When I lived in Paris, I had to use a payphone across the street from the apartment to call the US, which I did about once a week. Today, smartphones and the internet make staying connected much easier.

    Instead, I had to build a community of friends in Paris. In the aftermath of trauma, that mattered more than it might have otherwise.

    Q: What’s it like to have your experience in the form of a memoir?

    A: After ten years of writing, revising, and querying, holding the finished book in my hands is both surreal and a dream come true. When I started writing Toward the Light: A Year in Paris, I wondered whether I might uncover another layer of healing.

    Over time, my initial reason for writing expanded beyond myself. I wanted my family to know all of what I’d experienced. I wanted my nieces and nephews, most of whom are now young adults making their way in the world, to know I was courageousand resilient, and they could be, too. And I hoped the book would find a wider audience among survivors and their loved ones, offering them hope and healing.

    Q: What advice would you give to someone who is considering taking a similar path?

    A: My advice for other writers or for survivors who want to write their own story is twofold:

    First, keep going. Take a break when necessary, but do your best to keep showing up to write, whether it’s for five minutes or five hours. Life will happen, but if you believe in the writing and your project, don’t give up on it. Don’t give up on your story. Don’t give up on yourself.

    Second, find a community of writers. Writing is a solitary endeavor, but it requires support and encouragement from others. I’m fortunate to be part of a writing group that’s met for more than ten years. They were there to cheer me on when I wanted to quit.

    Q: And finally, I would love to know about your favorite books! What are you reading these days, and are there any books that have stayed with you over the years?

    A: There are several memoirs that have stayed with me, including: 

    • Wild by Cheryl Strayed

    • Appetites by Caroline Knapp

    • Know My Name by Chanel Miller

    • The Desert Pilgrim by Mary Swander

    • The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd

    • Slip by Mallary Tenore Tarpley

    I’m currently reading Skylark, a historical novel by Paula McLain. I recently read Courtney Maum’s memoir The Year of the Horses, and her new novel, Alan Opts Out. And I just finished The Names, a novel by Florence Knapp, which will probably make my top 10 list for this year.

    I’m grateful to Deborah for being kind enough to send me an advance copy of Toward the Light. It was a pleasure to read her story and then have the opportunity to talk with her about the experiences behind it.

    The memoir will be published on September 15, and I’m delighted to be able to share a little of her journey with you ahead of its release.

    Preorder at https://deborahsveccarstens.com/toward-the-light/

  • ‘Station Eleven’ by Emily St. John Mandel

    ‘Station Eleven’ by Emily St. John Mandel


    The End of Life as We Know It

    What if a great catastrophe were to bring about the end of life as we know it? What would be the thing that you missed most about the “old world”? Would it be the electricity and all the conveniences that came with it? Would it be advanced medicine and the possibility that humans can live longer?

    Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel gives readers a lot to think about. She creates a world that has been ravaged by a deadly disease called the Georgia Flu. In a matter of a week, the world’s population has been reduced to a fragment of what it once was, and those who survive often resort to savagery in order to keep themselves and their loved ones from starving to death.

    But we soon find that even violent plagues cannot snuff out beauty. The novel follows a caravan of musicians and actors who call themselves the Traveling Symphony. Their goal is to keep the remnants of beauty and art alive, even if doing so means that they must venture into various sketchy places, performing in front of people who might have become wild and unpredictable because of the struggle to survive.

    Then, they discover that their latest crowd is actually a religious cult. They are led by a Prophet who soon proves that he is accustomed to being in control of his followers — and his visitors. He suggests that the Traveling Symphony leave behind Alexandra, only a child, because he — the Prophet — is in search of a new wife. When they refuse, they soon discover that, for a cult that calls itself “the Light,” this is a group that is extremely passionate about making enemies and destroying them.

    Humans Need Survival Stories

    Something about this novel made me think of the television series Lost. There is a specific sort of drama that surrounds stories of survival, where the world and its conveniences are suddenly gone and the few who are left behind must get creative, carving out new existences. In these stories, humanity — and all acceptable behavior — is pushed to its limits. But I have noticed that, in such stories, hope and love do not ever truly die.

    In this situation, humans would need to relearn the skills necessary for survival. They would need to get used to a world of sudden silence — no radios, airplanes, electric guitars. And though such a tragedy may seem unlikely, perhaps it would still be a comfort to find beauty in silence and in completing tasks with our own, sincere effort. We humans have done so before; we can do it again. Perhaps, even after everything else is gone, we will still find ways to make beauty.

    The Museum of iPhones

    If the world ended, if for some terrible reason I had to walk away from city and home, I would still be content if I had my family traveling with me. My home is where my family is. I believe my greatest fear would be facing a hostile world without them. But in Station Eleven, everybody has lost loved ones to the Georgia Flu; entire families have died in their houses.

    At the airport (which no longer functions as one), there is a museum of things that humans once used but which are now useless: cell phones, laptops, IDs, all now paperweights because there is no way to charge them and bring them back to life. How haunting to picture it: these things that contributed to our everyday lives, that brought us joy, now nothing but memories to be gawked at.

    There is something particularly unsettling about the idea of a museum like this. Museums usually preserve things because they have survived long enough to become valuable or historically significant. Here, the objects are ordinary. They belonged to ordinary people who expected to keep using them tomorrow. A phone might have held photographs of a child, messages from a spouse, or the last conversation someone ever had with a loved one. Now it sits behind glass, stripped of its purpose.

    The museum also makes the world of Station Eleven feel strangely close to our own. We live surrounded by objects that seem permanent because we have never known a world without them. We assume there will always be electricity, cell service, the internet, and somewhere to buy a replacement when something breaks. The airport survivors have discovered what happens when all of those assumptions disappear at once.

    And perhaps that is what makes the museum so sad. It isn’t really a museum of technology. It is a museum of a vanished way of life. The phones and laptops are only the artifacts left behind.

    Lives That Matter

    Early in the novel, an exchange between a protagonist named Jeevan and a passing character makes a striking point about humanity and our best attributes:

    “You want to scrape drunks off the sidewalk for a living?”
    “I want to do something that matters, if that’s what you mean.”

    I believe that, underneath all our fears and ambitions, every honest human being has this desire. I believe that, at our core, humans are inherently good. There will always be a little light in our hearts urging us to make a positive difference.

    Many — if not most — people won’t act on this instinct. We are, unfortunately, very adept at drowning out this voice (can we call it our conscience?) with activities that create “noise,” distracting us into thinking, erroneously, that all is well. We can convince ourselves that there’s no need to interfere with life as it is.

    Station Eleven soon gives humanity no choice in the matter: people must learn to help one another, or die alone.

    Before the real drama begins, Jeevan gives voice to this sentiment. It is foreshadowing, but it is also something more. His words are simple, yet they point toward a truth that is easy to forget: we can let the noise and distraction fade away. It can become quiet enough that the small voice in our hearts, that lovely little light, is no longer drowned out. Instead, it can guide us forward toward opportunities to help others.

    In that very same opening of Station Eleven, there’s another moving passage involving Jeevan. When the actor playing Lear in a stage adaptation of King Lear suddenly dies, chaos ensues. In the midst of this, a young actress called Kirsten — little more than a child — approaches Jeevan and asks if the actor will be okay.

    The actor is already dead, but Jeevan must say something.

    “Just now,” Jeevan tells her, “he was doing the thing he loved best in the world. If acting was the last thing he ever did, then the last thing he ever did was something that made him happy.”

    Comfort at the End of the World

    Jeevan cannot restore life to the actor, nor can he ease the fear and trauma from Kirsten’s memory. But he can speak words of kindness and comfort, knowing this is probably the first time that child has witnessed death or been in the same room as a person who is deceased.

    Kind words, words of comfort, do matter. They will mean a great deal to the person who needs them. After all, it is said that we remember not so much what a person does, but how they make us feel. Comfort and undivided attention: they are two of the very greatest gifts.

    We all have the ability to “do something that matters” — offering a helping hand, a listening ear, a smile of genuine kindness in the face of life’s difficulties. These will not go unnoticed. Sometimes, what matters most is not solving the problem before us, but simply refusing to let another person face it alone.

    We may never know how deeply a small act of kindness stays with someone. But that is no reason not to offer it. In a frightening world, even a few gentle words can become a small place of safety.

    What Remains

    These things are what Station Eleven made me think about. When everything unnecessary has been stripped away, what will remain?

    Cell phones become paperweights. Airplanes stop flying. All the lights in every city will go out. Things we spent so much time acquiring may become useless overnight. But the impulse to create will remain. So will our ability to comfort one another–to listen, help, and love.

    The Traveling Symphony continues to perform because survival is not the only thing that makes life worth preserving. Jeevan stops to comfort a frightened child because kindness matters, even when there is nothing he can do to change what has happened. Small acts may seem insignificant beside the enormity of a catastrophe, but they are precisely what will keep us human.

    We cannot know what we would miss most if the world as we knew it disappeared. Perhaps we would long for electricity, medicine, warm houses, or the familiar conveniences of ordinary life. But I hope that, if everything else were taken away, we would still recognize the value of one another.

    This is the comfort of Station Eleven’s story: even at the end of the world, there will be opportunities to do something that matters. There will be beauty worth making and people worth comforting.

    That is how we carry a little light with us, even into the dark.

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