Yes, that is me--always giving into temptations (at least when it comes to books). The very last thing I needed to do was start another book, and if it had to be a library book, surely the most logical approach is to pick a book from the top of the pile (read--one that needs to be returned sooner than later) rather than choosing the book at the very bottom. But The Sisters Mortland appeals to me so much, that I had to start it. Set in the summer of 1967 (at least so far), it is the story of three sisters (the story thus far told by the youngest Mortland-- thirteen-year-old Maisie) when they had their portrait painted. Eventually we will jump ahead in time when the painter (unknown in 1967) has become famous as well as his painting, and Daniel (a friend of the sisters) reflects back on "that summer"--well, I haven't gotten that far yet. Throw in a crumbling medieval abbey (their home) and ghosts of the nuns who lived there (and talk to Maisie)--and to me this is simply too enticing of a story to pass up. Ignoring my ILL book (will get back to it soon, I promise), at lunchtime today I read this passage and thought you might be able to relate (Maisie has just asked her mother to tell her the story of when she met her father):
"And so Stella does. She tells me how she was born in Edinburgh, how her father took his family to Canada when she was six months old, and how she grew up on a farm in Ontario, dreaming of a Scotland and an England she'd never seen. She tells me what a bookworm she was as a child; how she devoured books, how books were her sustenance, just as they were Finn's. 'Mine too', I say, but Stella doesn't like the books I like, and as usual she isn't listening. She presses on.
'No reading at the table, Stella,' her father used to say when she smuggled a book into meals. So she'd put it away--Kidnapped, or Jane Eyre, or Great Expectations--and then continue in the yard and (with a torch) under the sheets half the night. Except she wasn't in the yard or in bed, of course, she was in that other world. She was trapped in a treacherous tower; she was watching mad Mrs. Rochester rend Jane's wedding veil; she was staring at Miss Havisham's spider-infested bride cake.
'Those books still color my life,' she says now, sighing. 'Maisie, when will I learn? Books, books--an addiction to stories. No one should live like that. I do know that--but I can't cure myself.'
I don't want Stella to be cured--besides, if it hadn't been for the books, she might never have come to England, never have met my father. Think of the consequences: I wouldn't have been born. I wouldn't exist. Luckily, Stella was not cured of the book addiction. When she was eighteen and left school, her parents gave her a special present, the one gift for which she yearned. They gave her a year in England. She would travel to England, and--staying with a network of aunts, cousins, and parental friends--she would finally visit the places she'd dreamed of so long. She crossed the sea on a huge liner, traveling steerage. She arrived in Liverpool and at once took a train to her native Edinburgh. It was the autumn of 1938: That weakling Chamberlain was promising peace for our time.
Stella spent a week with two maiden aunts in Morningside, and then the great journey began. I love the details of this pilgrimage of trains, buses, and charabancs, Stella worked her way southward: she went to Walter Scott (the Borders), then Wordsworth and Coleridge (the Lakes)...During the winter of that year, she walked the moors at Haworth with the three Bronte sisters, strange companions and unsettling ones; but Stella, who knew their work by heart, was well prepared for this. She visited Lawrence in Nottingham and Tennyson in Lincolnshire. Arm in arm with Dickens, she explored the streets of London, then she sped northwest to Shakespeare, the forest of Arden, and Warwickshire. There she stayed with yet another spinster aunt--for some considerable time. After that it was Thomas Hardy and Dorset; then--it was late summer--Jane Austen in Bath. Stella persued her beloved Austen to Lyme Regis and finally to Hampshire. That September, she was in Winchester Cathedral paying homage to Austen's grave when she became aware of a stir among the other visitors. She closed her copy of Mansfield Park (then being read for the fifth time). She was puzzled by the whispers in the nave and by discernible outbreak of excitement--or was it fear? She left the cathedral and approached the knots of people gathered outside. She asked what had happened. They told her war had been declared."
Sorry that was so long, but I love that passage. I think any lover of books can appreciate it. Have you noticed that authors quite often write about characters who have a great love of literature. I am not sure I have come across any characters that hated reading. Certainly they must exist, but I can't think of any. Can you? Now can you see why I don't want to put this book down? Why worry about too many books on the nightstand when I am enjoying this book so much?!