Comfort

     I enjoyed enormously - as always - the comments on this month's Book Group book, A Month in the Country, and thankyou to all who contributed. You can read everyone's thoughts here, and will find, I hope, that the different insights others have had enrich your own experience of the novel, or may lead you to read it if you haven't done so already.
     I was particularly struck by what Mary had to say. Like many of us, she was affected by the stillness of the book, but in her case that quality was all the more important, given what she says next: "I read it in a hospital sideward two weeks ago where someone close to me was very ill and I felt calmed by it where other books would have irked."
    Also on Saturday I read an interview with Alexander McCall Smith, from which the following paragraph stood out:
"To say McCall Smith is a literary phenomenon doesn’t quite describe what has happened. He has become more of a movement, a worldwide club for the dissemination of gentle wisdom and good cheer. Letters pour in from people to say they have found his books inspiring, enlightening, amusing, comforting. They are read to the sick and the dying. They make a splash of colour in a drab world and provide a genial buffer against the disappointments of life."
His books are read to the sick and the dying  - yes, I can see why.
    I called this post 'Comfort' not in order to talk about what we often call 'comfort reading', the equivalent of the cosy sweater, or the mug of hot chocolate, but to highlight this much deeper more literal form of comfort  - relief or consolation - which we can get from books. I am glad Mary found it when it was needed through J.L. Carr's beautiful novel, and I shall look out for it in my own reading. As always, if you can suggest a book that you know to be comforting, please do.

Later: do go and read Barbara's post on the subject.

Comments

[Barbara]

Your thoughtful post seems to have stunned your readers into silence. I've been thinking about it on and off and decided to put my thoughts on my own blog. Thank you.

[Dark Puss]

Silence is golden if you have nothing to add. I know of no comforting books in the sense that Cornflower seeks. Perhaps I did once, as a child, but for better or worse (and I am neutral on this subject) I don't now.

[adele geras]

I was very comforted in many ways by Marilynne Robinson's GILEAD and HOME. The prose uplifted me, the emotions stirred my feelings and I ended up thinking that these were books that made life make some kind of sense and be worthwhile. The nearest sort of thing to a religious experience for someone who is not religious at all. But there are other comforts and a good thriller can be relied upon to provide huge amounts of comforting pleasure. Actually, thinking about it, I get a certain kind of comfort from all sorts of things...I'm wittering,so will shut up!
PS I read Barbara's post and thought it excellent.

[Susie Vereker]

I've been enjoying comfort-tapes - the audio book of All Creatures Great and Small. See my blog.