Sunday, July 1, 2018

Books Keep Us Free

There are quite a few books that I have had the pleasure of reading that have brought me a new depth and perception to my life that I never could have thought possible.  There are numberless books that have changed me.  There are so many many books that have caused me to lose hours and hours of much needed sleep, while I either read them, or relived them in my head.  There are only a few that have changed me, given me a new depth, and caused me to lose sleep not because I wanted to, but because I was haunted by them.

Hiroshima by John Hersey was a book that left images in my mind and heart that haunted me for a week afterward.  When I think of that novel, I feel the breath leaving my body, as if my lungs no longer work.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.  The difference of this novel is that it is a work of pure fiction.  So I was able to eventually crawl out of the abyss this one threw me into.  However, what happens to the main character in this novel is an occurrence that happens much too often when it should never even be a whiff of imagination.  Young girls preyed upon, obsessed by, kidnapped, raped, murdered and the people who get away with it.  It is nothing one should ever have to know about, much less experience.  And the families left behind, torn apart by the not knowing and the evil that such a mark can leave on the world.  This work left me aching for those who have been through this, whether or not they survived.  It left me aching for families that were shattered by these things, and made me, as a mother, a basket case for quite some time.

The book I just completed yesterday is in the same mold.  The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe. You can hear all the horrors and the heroic events of such a time, but it never prepares you for when it impresses itself upon you like a vice.  The images and the events spin around in my head like a whirlwind.  To imagine those who lived through it and had to carry on such horrifying nightmares from which most of their family never survived... there are no words that can comprehend it.  But there are words that can try.  This one mixes fiction with nonfiction, but to be honest, you knew when you were reading fiction and when you simply were not.

I couldn't even rate it on good reads because I could never say whether it was a good thing to have read it or not. I could never say I recommend it.  I could never say, "Read this, you'll love it." Because it terrified me. While immersed in its pages, reality felt like a dream that was too good.  I could barely comprehend the polar opposite that it was. Even now, I am left with these pieces of myself that I have to figure out how to reassemble.  And I know that when I am done, the picture will not be quite the same.

Each of these books has left a mark that will not come off.  I respect them for that, I thank them for that.  But I will never read any of these three books again.  I cannot experience them again.

I think of what I will write, and I think of why, and I know.  These books, this last one in particular, remind me of that.

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