MY BEST BOOKS EVER...
Daisy Goodwin
I AM VERY sad to say this is my last column. It’s been a huge treat to rack my brains for the books that might help you through the tough stuff, but now, with a second series of my TV drama Victoria to write, I’m handing over to the very wonderful Gill Hornby, who will be sharing her own library of first aid.
Writing this column has made me realise how much we have to learn from novels. The past year was one of upheaval from the Brexit vote to Donald Trump being elected U.S. President.
Great novels can help you understand how two very similar people (my brother and I, for example) can feel so differently about the same subject. I’m never going to agree with him politically, but having read Ladder Of Years by Anne Tyler about sibling conflict, I think I can understand where he is coming from.
In the same way, reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch, where the jealous Reverend Edward Casaubon tries to control his wife, Dorothea, from beyond the grave by denying her his fortune, helped me come to terms with my mother’s decision to leave me out of her will.
It taught me how vital is it to communicate about difficult issues when people are still alive. Teaching a lesson posthumously is just too late.
And as a mother myself, one who is often tempted to opine on the choices my daughters make, I have read two books this year that have helped me acknowledge they must have the freedom to make their own decisions.
The first was The Vegetarian by South Korean writer Han Kang, where the heroine’s decision to stop eating meat ends with her family committing her to an asylum. Their intolerance has made me examine my occasional impatience with my vegan daughter.
And then there is Mrs Bennet in Pride And Prejudice. She is a dire warning to all mothers of daughters of a marriageable age about the grotesqueness of trying to match-make.
The more you read, the more you understand; good books are the answer to pretty much all of life’s problems.
I have had therapy, taken pills and meditated to find answers, but in the end, the only place I ever really find consolation is in my bookshelf. Just as you need to stretch to keep your body from seizing up, you need to read widely to keep your mind supple.
If you make one resolution this year, read something by an author you have never read before. You won’t regret it.
tHe author and creator of ItV’s Victoria shares her favourite reads