Dr Rebecca Fisher (English Association)
Two books changed my life.As a teenager, I read A. S. Byatt’s The Virgin in the Garden, and something fundamental shifted in the way books worked in my mind: it wasn’t only a portal into another world, but an invitation to make new meaning by connecting the story to other things I’d seen or read or heard. I was so lucky to go on that autumn to do an English degree, where I learned properly to find and articulate that point of connection between myself and a text and the world.
Years later, when my baby girl arrived, and I was alone in the hospital bed, not allowed visitors because of Covid, not allowed my baby because she was in the NICU, I tried to turn to Garden for comfort. It was like someone had turned off the lights. The thing that had always helped me to engage with worlds outside of myself, but also the world within myself, was gone.
What broke the curse was another book, Professing Criticism by John Guillory. I thought I’d better read it so I could keep up with the cool kids. I was too scared of failing to think I might enjoy it. But what happened felt like a miracle. The lights had come back on; I felt invigorated by the invitation to think, to engage.
So I picked up Garden, and it fell open on a bit where Stephanie, the quiet, serious, older sister of the fierce, sharp protagonist Frederica, is teaching a poetry lesson. On that cold February morning I was never so glad as feel my mind excited by the rich, layered, dense way Byatt describes Stephanie’s thoughts. The best bit? These days I snatch words whenever I can, grateful for the books that changed my life.
