Bedtime Stories for Grown-Ups

When I was single, I thought I had a fair idea of what couples did in bed:

Have sex.

Argue over whether to keep the bedroom window open or closed.

Keep each other awake by snoring.

One item that would almost certainly not have been on my list, however, is: read to each other.

As a small child, I loved it when my mother read picture books to me.  By the time I was a year old, I probably owned more books than a mediaeval scholar could hope to acquire in a lifetime (maybe twenty), though admittedly mine had titles like Mr Gumpy’s Outing and TheTeddy Bears’ ABC rather than DeConsolatione Philosophiae.  We visited the library every week, where there were toddler-height boxes to allow a child to select new books.  Most often, though, I chose old favourites again and again, like Bringing The Rain To Kapiti Plain, Verna Aardema’s verse retelling of a Kenyan legend of how a herdsman ended a terrible drought.

My mother began teaching me my letters early on, and I was reading short chapter-books by the time I started school.  By the age of seven, I had lost patience with reading aloud.  It was frustratingly slow compared to silent reading, when I wanted to get on with the story.

My mother still occasionally read to my brothers and me until we were well into our teens, but this usually only happened when we were on holiday without my father, as he would have thought that we were much too grown-up to be read to.  I enjoyed it, but my mother was so good an actor, doing different voices for each character, that it also felt slightly disturbing.  She seemed to become someone else, rather than Mum.

Fast-forwarding nearly twenty years, I fell in love with a wonderful man who shared my passion for books, and liked many of the same genres, from fantasy and science fiction to popular science books on natural history.  As I have described, on our honeymoon we found an English edition of Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke, which my husband read to me as a bedtime story.

Sharing a book, after being a solitary reader for so long, was novel.  It was like sharing a bed, or a bath, or being unembarrassed at being naked in front of another person.  And, like all these, it was extremely pleasant.  Since then, other books we have tried as bedtime stories include:

Children Of The Star trilogy by Sylvia Engdahl: deconstructs everything you thought you knew about dystopias.  When a heroic peasant rebels against the injustices of his world – the caste system where only the Elders and Technicians have access to technology, the ludicrous founding myth that his people came down from the sky, and the Inquisition who ruthlessly hunt down heretics like him – he discovers that the real problems facing his people are much harder to solve than he could ever have imagined.

Overheard In A Dream by Torey Hayden: when a psychiatrist begins treating a troubled boy, he books sessions to get to know the child’s parents and sister, too.  But how are the boy’s terrifying memories of ‘the man under the rug’, and a trip to the moon, linked to his sister’s friendship with a mysterious boy called the Lion King, and his mother’s visions of a priestess in a parallel universe?  How much of what anyone tells him is fantasy, and how much just might turn out to be true?

Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett: when Trev, candle-maker and football fan, falls in love with Juliet, kitchen-maid and – shockingly! – supporter of a rival football team, his geeky friend Nutt offers to help him court her, and soon falls in love with Juliet’s stout, kindly and intelligent friend Glenda.  But when Nutt takes over coaching the world’s first all-wizard football team, he is confronted by questions: why do his fingers sometimes morph into claws?  Why was he kept chained to an anvil until he was seven years old?  His guardians told him that he was a goblin, but what if the truth is worse?

Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne: so far the only book we have given up reading aloud.  It’s funny and quirky, with very memorable and likeable characters, but, like Mark Stanley’s Freefall, is willing to put the plot on hold indefinitely in order to get in a good joke, or a long digression.  Add to this the fact that it isn’t told in chronological order, and we tailed off before the narrator got round to being born.

The Horse Boy by Rupert Isaacson: a man and his severely autistic five-year-old son travel across Mongolia on horseback, in the hope of finding shamans who may be able to help the boy.  As they travel, they realise that the child is more than he seems, and may be destined to become a shaman himself. 

One thing I liked about this one is that it doesn’t give a choice between seeing autism as either an illness that must be cured or precious uniqueness that must not be interfered with.  Rupert reflects that he does not want his son Rowan to be cured, so much as healed.  It isn’t a matter of whether Rowan will grow into an autistic shaman or a normal child who can talk coherently, control his bowels, and have a loving relationship with his parents and his friends.  If he can learn to conquer his fears, he can fulfil both these destinies; left to himself, he may do neither.

Life from our birth onwards revolves around learning to do more and more things alone and independently, until we are ready to leave home.  This can seem like an exciting adventure – or like being condemned to perpetual isolation.  Falling in love is the discovery that just because we can live alone doesn’t mean we have to.