Call Me By Your Name – Andr├® Aciman
Words by Geethika Ayilliath
In our final year of high school, my best friend and I read Call Me By Your Name together. I had heard of it first and recommended it to her. Soon, we were immersed in an idyllic summer in small-town Italy, surrounded by soft sounds of whirring insects, the oceanÔÇÖs crashing waves and the cool summer breeze. We were highly interior people. We discussed emotions, ideas and abstract concepts more than we talked about the real world. After all, the real world wasnÔÇÖt that interesting. It was all deadlines, tests and the relentless pressure of A-Levels. So, we found ourselves in ElioÔÇÖs introspective voice, constantly dissecting every thought, action and event that occurred.
As we fell deeper in love with the book, we fell deeper into our friendship. We began to write emails to each other, inspired by the voice of the novel. Deep, reflective, totally pretentious emails with paragraphs of meandering words. Just for the love of writing, for the love of human connection. After a while, these emails petered out. But they formed the foundation of what would be a sporadic letter writing habit that kept us connected in university. She went to Canada, and I came to the UK. Almost instantly after, the world was hit with pandemic and the idyllic, pastoral atmosphere of Call Me By Your Name became an unreachable fantasy as we stayed couped up in our university accommodations. It was then she suggested that we write letters to each other. ÔÇ£Like those emails we used to send each other, but better.ÔÇØ These letters were rare and short owing to how busy we were. But when I read them, I am taken back to that time when my friend and I found solace in a book in a dizzyingly stressful and mundane world.
The Famous Five Series – Enid Blyton
Words by Carys Scales
My family is extremely split when it comes to literature- one half devours books and the other mainly sticks to magazines and newspapers. This is especially true for my mother, who hasnÔÇÖt read a book in years, so we never really talked about books. This changed when my grandparents moved house. They were clearing out the attic and found an old box of books, covered in a layer of dust. As the one who read the most in the family, the box was given to me. Inside was every single book in Enid BlytonÔÇÖs Famous Five series. The books were clearly well-loved, judging by the number of dog-eared pages. Being a child myself at the time, I was over the moon- after all, who doesnÔÇÖt love free books? I picked the first one in the series and when I opened it, I found my motherÔÇÖs name scrawled in the cover with her age: nine (a spooky coincidence since I was also nine.) In these old copies, they contained line drawings of the characters on random pages throughout the book. My motherÔÇÖs nine-year-old self had spent hours colouring them in and drawing little additions to the scenes. She is an excellent artist, and seeing how hard she worked on these drawings was truly heartwarming. I think itÔÇÖs easy to forget that our parents were young once too and this reminded me how quickly time goes by. IÔÇÖve kept the books in a safe space, and sometimes I find that one has gone missing and will return with even more images drawn on the pages. The books have become a little time capsule, which emphasises the beauty and the strong influence that literature can have.
A Streetcar Named Desire – Tennessee Williams
Words by Isabella Walsh
During my A-Levels, it was a known fact in my English Lit class that I was obsessed with Blanche DuBois, the tragic protagonist of Tennessee WilliamsÔÇÖ A Streetcar Named Desire. Her raw vulnerability due to her deteriorating mental state, alongside her rejection of the post-war patriarchy made her stand out from other female characters in the play, and despite her obvious flaws, I was drawn to her character. These attributes struck me as I could not only look forward to writing about them, but also relate to her desire to express her strong emotions within a society that suppresses them. I loved the lessons where we would study Streetcar, my teacher creating a safe space in which we could debate the charactersÔÇÖ moralities and motivations, and these discussions allowed us to understand each otherÔÇÖs perspectives through the filter of characters. It wasnÔÇÖt until the last few lessons that I realised the profound understanding that I had gained through my passionate expression of connection towards BlancheÔÇÖs character.
When exam season came around, my teacher decided to give every member of the class a year 13 leaving present. Everyone received a copy of George OrwellÔÇÖs 1984, and a card, but instead of a ÔÇÿgood luckÔÇÖ message to us all, each contained a different literary quotation. Mine immediately resonated with me, filling me with a sense of belonging. It read:
ÔÇÿThat is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that youÔÇÖre not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.ÔÇÖ – F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Nothing could have summarised how literature made me feel more accurately, and my teacher writing this to me made me realise that I was not isolated in that feeling, that my fascination with Blanche was not just one that was academic – it made me feel less alone.
Best Friends – Jacqueline Wilson
Words by Gabriella Sanders
In the spring semester of my second year at university, I stumbled into my first ChildrenÔÇÖs Literature seminar not wholeheartedly knowing what to expect. Little did I know that our discussion would transport me back to 2012, to the wonderful tribulations of being ten years old. The content that week was on Jacqueline Wilson, a long-forgotten favourite that filled the minds of my childhood best friend Bethan and I. From the famous Story of Tracy Beaker to Lily Alone, we lived between the pages of the tales that spelled out emotion in a way that weÔÇÖd never known, and together we loved them. My fellow ChildrenÔÇÖs Literature students talked of similar stories, reminiscing on the way that WilsonÔÇÖs writing made adult themes accessible to our young minds – her books were pretty much a rite of passage growing up. For Bethan and I, amid traded tales and glitter penned pages, our perfect alliance was suddenly posed under threat when my mother sat me down to reveal that we would be moving house. This may not seem all that ground-breaking out of context, but Bethan and I had lived a short six-minute walk from one another for the entirety of our young lives, and at ten years old the concept of a twenty-minute drive doesnÔÇÖt seem all that different from a trip to the moon. When the day arrived that weÔÇÖd face our departure,
amidst many tears Bethan handed me one special book, WilsonÔÇÖs Best Friends. This book tells the story of Gemma and Alice, two best friends. When Alice must move away to Scotland, Wilson contends with the story of how it feels to lose your best friend. Bethan and I loved Wilson and found comfort in the dramatics of a tale that felt much like our own, living in the literature that brought us together even when apart. We make stories out of our lives and find them within fiction, united in literature. Bethan turned twenty-one last week, and I love her to this day.
