Good Reading Review
What’s an author to do when confined to home by COVID lockdowns? In Bird’s case, she started remembering books read and books written, pulling those threads into a tapestry of her life, starting with her childhood in Tasmania. She traced patterns that emerged in books that she has written and those she had read since she was born in 1940.
The principal lens for this memoir was formed from the books Bird has read in her long life. She made herself some rules. She would only consult books that were in the house and she could re-read whole books or just examine them. In this way she was confined, locked into her library, but seeking all the while, particularly one book she could not find, which had been a favourite. But like all rules, some were bound to be broken.
She recalls being not at all amused by Cole’s Funny Picture Book; realising that writing about fear is often a way for students to really start writing; and recalling the bomb shelter in the garden of the family home, walls papered with maps of the world. Bird owns family books about Tasmania’s wretched history, from First Nations, convicts and beyond, and her childhood reading made her realise that the land was haunted by a violent history of betrayal and massacre.
This is a gentle, erudite book, musing on the joys of her library. It may encourage readers to revisit their own books, musing on how those works may have influenced their lives.
Reviewed by Jennifer Somerville
