Sometimes You Have to Put the Book Down
Mali Delargy
Every Christmas I am given a mountain of books, which I stack by my bed and sleep in the shadow of. I am hiking the mountain as we speak, and I will be working hard all year to reach its summit: my yearly Goodreads target of 60. This is a task that requires strategy to avoid burnout. I need variety — I need to enjoy it!
My new year began in Sydney, and of course I brought my mountain with me. I planned to finish my heavy reading from semester one (Hermione Lee’s biography of Virginia Woolf, a brick in my hand luggage), then move on to my dissertation texts (Ann Quin), then take a break with an Australia-themed page-turner (The Secret River by Kate Grenville, that I accidentally left on the plane). The gears were in motion.
Then I was back in the UK. The sun had disappeared, and I thought I deserved a short, interesting-looking indulgence before going back to the books I should be reading for class. I picked up Nothing Grows by Moonlight by Torborg Nedreaas.
The plot goes as follows: A woman recounts her life to a stranger she meets at a train station. In his living room, he listens, lights her cigarettes, refills her glass. She lays bare her story of love and loss. And a lot more loss than love.
The book was unbearable. It is only two hundred pages, but every time I came back to it, I found another 20 pages of heartbreak. I did not want to pick it up, knowing I would only find her overwhelming poverty and deep-rooted loneliness. Nedreaas’ extreme depiction of life felt almost cruel, showing a woman yearning for happiness she will never have. To have everything in reach only for it to be taken away again and again.
I wouldn’t recommend the book, not because I don’t think it’s well written, but because I found that being in her headspace changed how I thought. I was conscious of being mildly upset without knowing why, a constant weight on my chest. I found myself crying all the time. Not long bouts but short bursts, small things pushing me off the precipice I was already on.
And I have felt this before. It is the reason I can’t watch Normal People again, and it is why I would recommend watching Mary Harron’s American Psycho, but not reading Bret Easton Ellis’ book. Long-format sadness, as beautiful or entertaining as it may be, forces you to be sad.
I made it to the end of the book last week, but its claws haven’t released me yet. Maybe I’m overly invested in the stories I consume, or maybe how much it affected me is a sign of its artistic value. I felt compelled to reach the end of it to feel a release, hoping against hope that the end was a happy one. By then its sadness had already leeched into me, and I realise now that I have a responsibility to help myself feel okay.
I realised that a work like this isn’t compatible with a functioning, happy life. Like anything strong, it should be consumed thoughtfully and in moderation. I want to be happy, and it means allowing myself to put the book down.
Photo by Ava Gomez
