Comfort reading, part two

What else besides the Little House books?

2. Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood. I think this wins for my favorite novel ever, if I had to pick just one. Although this isn't children's literature at all, I think it works similarly to children's literature for escapism, because it presents an intense dissection of childhood. In some ways it's singularly nostalgic, but in other ways it isn't, since the childhood that it portrays wasn't always very happy. I think this novel creates the most pitch-perfect portrait (to mix a metaphor!) of how girls can be cruel to one another - at least, it perfectly recreates the dynamic of girl-on-girl cruelty that I experienced in middle school. That doesn't sound very consoling, but perhaps I find it so because it's written from the perspective of the bullying victim much later in life, looking back, so it's clear from the start that the narrator has survived, moved on, thrived, and even (scarily) occasionally perpetuated the same dynamics as a bully herself. Apart for the being a bully part, being able to look back on such dynamics from a distance, as events firmly in the past, is reassuring. Cat's Eye also gives me more escapism because much of it takes places in the 40s and 50s and 60s (and in Canada).
     
3. Nevil Shute books. I'm going to lump them together collectively. I first discovered these not via On the Beach, which is probably his best-known work (and is an extremely good book, especially good if you need a cathartic weeping session), or A Town Like Alice, also well-known due to the Masterpiece Theatre production, but by way of a couple of ratty old paperbacks that my mom bought during the sixties and which she brought from England with her: No Highway and Ruined City. (There's a film version of No Highway starring Jimmy Stewart, which doesn't hurt, although his character is much, um, weirder in the book!) These are yet more books set in the past, and far away from where I live (England during WWII and Australia after the war), and more books where straightforward goodness and kindness tend to win out - although if you know the plot of On the Beach, you know that Shute had his dark side (short summary: superpowers in Europe/Asia/North America blow each other to bits in a nuclear conflict, and the people in Australia have to sit and wait for the lethal fallout to reach the southern hemisphere. Cheery). People in Shute's books are rarely bad - weak, maybe, but not truly bad. Even people who do bad things are generally forced to do so by bad circumstances (although in his WWII books, the Germans tend to be an exception - there's a fair amount of xenophobic discussion of the Germans as evil and wrong, almost an inhuman group collectively, even while again, Shute portrays individuals humanely). The fundamental goodness in Shute's characters in no way guarantees happy endings - one of the saddest books I've ever read is Requiem for a Wren, which paints a quiet but devastating portrait of how war can destroy people's lives (not in the obvious way - destruction of cities whatnot - but psychically).

I still have to come up with a couple more choices, but I'm already struck by the difference between what I read and what Flavia listed in her response to this meme. I've only read one of the books on Flavia's list (which I would call much more "literary" than mine!). I completely understand her point about the consolations of narrative. But boy, she's much more willing to grapple with difficult stuff for consolation than I am.

Comments

[hypatia cade]

I read this and your perspective is so interesting. After I read back through the other ones I couldn't resist adding in my own thoughts....

[Wol]

Cat's Eye and On the Beach are two long-time favorites of mine. In fact, although I love almost all of her work, I think Cat's Eye might be my favorite Atwood book.

For me, comfort reading includes Dick Francis (his protagonists may be all the same guy with different names, but I love them all), Garth Nix's Old Kingdom series, and, often, novels set in academia--just to reassure myself that I don't want to be there!

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Oooh, I love Dick Francis! (though yes, his protagonists are all the same! ;-D)

[luckybuzz]

I loooooove Cat's Eye. I reread it fairly often. I find it very consoling, too, though I never would have thought of it in that capacity if you hadn't mentioned it!

And I am right there with you on the Little House books, too.

[undine]

I don't remember anything about Cat's Eye except the fantastically realistic girl-on-girl cruelty, which captures middle school to a T. I'll have to reread the book now that you've mentioned that the narrator survived it.