i found camilla, by madeleine l'engle, today. it's been something i've been looking for, for a long, long time.
the first time i read this book was when i was ten. well into voracious, insatiable reader-mode, the kind where even the librarians laugh at you because your arms aren't long enough to hold the stack of books you want to check out, the topmost book wedged precariously under your chin, because your parents will only take you to the library once every two weeks and you always, always finish that stack before the first week ends and accidentally wash your umpteenth library card, the one with your name and card number in the crazy bulbous faux computer font; the kind where you're borrowing books that seem unrelated, but reference an author or subject from the last bunch, which built on the bunch before and the bunch before, and you slowly begin to realize that everything is about everything and how daunting being grown-up will really be; the kind when you start figuring out that the answer to life, besides living it, is vicariously experiencing it through books if you're not allowed to live it.
my elementary school had a fairly decent library, since it was a magnet public school and the powers that be invariably deem it necessary for the gifted and talented (and the rich neighborhood kids) to have a wider selection of books. to this day, i can't reconcile being a prole with actually, you know, being a prole. i had put the horsey books away in short order: all of fourth grade was consumed by the marguerite henry oeuvre, down to her letters from readers book, and walter farley and his ghostwriters. i even consumed the burly will james works, laying the foundation for my distaste/fascination with all things western. but camilla, oh camilla...
the wrinkle in time series is perennially a YA favorite. you can't go wrong with the sympathetic, smart, self-conscious, homely outsider, a misfit sometimes even in her own home. i shudder to think about those who never went much past babysitter twins and the francine pascal monolith, branching only into v.c. andrews before taking the grownup plunge into bodice-rippery, throbbing purple manhood (menhood? manhoods?) and all. camilla is different.
the gold italic lettering on the spine stood out on the shelf. it looked awkward, gangly next to its brethren, orderly and content in their pert roles as part of a set, different yet matchy-matchy like the girls in my class. the lettering was flashy and brilliant once, yet losing its luster to much handling or abuse. the dust jacket had been shed many a reader-and-waterstain ago, the binding coming loose and beginning to angle defiantly against the book's place on the shelf, but hanging in there with the help of the determined endsheets. a musty whiff as the cover opened reinforced the silent testament of the few names on the check-out card, the ancient-to-the-young dates, 1973, 1981, the spring of 1984, on the Date Due sheet facing the card jacket. the end of the Reagan era was nigh, to be sure. have you ever met a formerly six-year-old misfit fan of Mondale? you have now.
i took it home. everything must be read, after all. it must be good, or at least fun-and-science-y, judging from her earlier books. i was wrong, in the most perfect way.
she said i wasn't alone in being alone. that's the short version. the long one? realizing that i was an i, ego, id, fragile and resilient as an egg, an individual separate from my parents, from my family, an unalienable/alienable person; that crying was something that you did end up having to hide a lot, that the purple dye on the cover starts to bleed when you take it into the bath and don't continually dry your hands before handling it to turn the page, the book precariously propped on the porcelain edge with a damp washcloth near; that Vietnam was a tangible war, the damage that it did to real people, physical and psychological, shaping and destroying lives far from the frontlines; that war and money and circumstances make other people's lives different from yours, and you're different but they're also all different not only from you but from each other, secrets or no; that people do do things for themselves despite their feelings for you, that trust can exist in forms other than all or nothing - this was the book that told me everything will be sort of okay and you can get over it in the long run.
camilla helped me grow up, and i'm sorry that i'll never meet her or her creator, and, maybe, just a little bit sorry for myself and who i'm not, in that special, YA-primed self-pitying way.
the first time i read this book was when i was ten. well into voracious, insatiable reader-mode, the kind where even the librarians laugh at you because your arms aren't long enough to hold the stack of books you want to check out, the topmost book wedged precariously under your chin, because your parents will only take you to the library once every two weeks and you always, always finish that stack before the first week ends and accidentally wash your umpteenth library card, the one with your name and card number in the crazy bulbous faux computer font; the kind where you're borrowing books that seem unrelated, but reference an author or subject from the last bunch, which built on the bunch before and the bunch before, and you slowly begin to realize that everything is about everything and how daunting being grown-up will really be; the kind when you start figuring out that the answer to life, besides living it, is vicariously experiencing it through books if you're not allowed to live it.
my elementary school had a fairly decent library, since it was a magnet public school and the powers that be invariably deem it necessary for the gifted and talented (and the rich neighborhood kids) to have a wider selection of books. to this day, i can't reconcile being a prole with actually, you know, being a prole. i had put the horsey books away in short order: all of fourth grade was consumed by the marguerite henry oeuvre, down to her letters from readers book, and walter farley and his ghostwriters. i even consumed the burly will james works, laying the foundation for my distaste/fascination with all things western. but camilla, oh camilla...
the wrinkle in time series is perennially a YA favorite. you can't go wrong with the sympathetic, smart, self-conscious, homely outsider, a misfit sometimes even in her own home. i shudder to think about those who never went much past babysitter twins and the francine pascal monolith, branching only into v.c. andrews before taking the grownup plunge into bodice-rippery, throbbing purple manhood (menhood? manhoods?) and all. camilla is different.
the gold italic lettering on the spine stood out on the shelf. it looked awkward, gangly next to its brethren, orderly and content in their pert roles as part of a set, different yet matchy-matchy like the girls in my class. the lettering was flashy and brilliant once, yet losing its luster to much handling or abuse. the dust jacket had been shed many a reader-and-waterstain ago, the binding coming loose and beginning to angle defiantly against the book's place on the shelf, but hanging in there with the help of the determined endsheets. a musty whiff as the cover opened reinforced the silent testament of the few names on the check-out card, the ancient-to-the-young dates, 1973, 1981, the spring of 1984, on the Date Due sheet facing the card jacket. the end of the Reagan era was nigh, to be sure. have you ever met a formerly six-year-old misfit fan of Mondale? you have now.
i took it home. everything must be read, after all. it must be good, or at least fun-and-science-y, judging from her earlier books. i was wrong, in the most perfect way.
she said i wasn't alone in being alone. that's the short version. the long one? realizing that i was an i, ego, id, fragile and resilient as an egg, an individual separate from my parents, from my family, an unalienable/alienable person; that crying was something that you did end up having to hide a lot, that the purple dye on the cover starts to bleed when you take it into the bath and don't continually dry your hands before handling it to turn the page, the book precariously propped on the porcelain edge with a damp washcloth near; that Vietnam was a tangible war, the damage that it did to real people, physical and psychological, shaping and destroying lives far from the frontlines; that war and money and circumstances make other people's lives different from yours, and you're different but they're also all different not only from you but from each other, secrets or no; that people do do things for themselves despite their feelings for you, that trust can exist in forms other than all or nothing - this was the book that told me everything will be sort of okay and you can get over it in the long run.
camilla helped me grow up, and i'm sorry that i'll never meet her or her creator, and, maybe, just a little bit sorry for myself and who i'm not, in that special, YA-primed self-pitying way.
1 comment:
I will borrow this from you someday. Just try and stop me.
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