You can’t beat the company of bookworms

My new book (Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading, which is about all the books and characters – from Teddy Robinson, Tottie the doll and Milly-molly-mandy to Just William, Jo March and her sisters, and Pauline, Petrova and Posy Fossil – that populated my young world much more vividly than real-life ones did) came out a fortnight ago.

Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of talking about it at various book shops and festival events, and experiencing the strangest sensation for the customarily solitary bookworm: communality.

As one who even refused to join the Puffin Club on the grounds that it would be a waste of good reading time, and had a mother whose most common reaction to the sight of her daughter curled up in a chair with a book, and oblivious to all but the sights and sounds of Cair Paravel emanating from the page, was to cry: “Put that thing down and go and DO something!”, the sensation of being among sympathetic souls is… new.

Whenever I’m on stage and mention a book – The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, perhaps, or The

Family from One End Street, say – there is a collective sigh from the audience (and me) as our memories of the books come flooding back.

I mention a scene and a gentle susurration of recognition runs through the room. We know. We remember. We were there, in Wilbur’s barn when he first saw Charlotte; swinging with Katy as the staple cracked above her head; and in the secret garden with Mary when the first green shoots peered through the earth.

It’s rather wonderful. I feel, at last, that I have found my people. I feel this all the more so for knowing that they all want to leave as soon as possible and get back to their books.