Book Girl

by Sarah Clarkson

  The Golden Books Family Treasury of Poetry by Louis Untermeyer (Editor)

  I didn’t stumble upon this collection until I was a teen, and though it is technically a children’s anthology, I pored over its whimsical illustrations and excellent selection of classic poetry, old and new, and packed it as one of the first books to be carted across the ocean to Oxford.

  [1] Robert Frost and Louis Untermeyer, The Letters of Robert Frost to Louis Untermeyer (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1963), 23.

  Startled Awake: Novels That Kindled My Delight in Existence

  (OR, BOOKS TO MAKE THE WORLD COME TO LIFE)

  I TEND TO MEET deadlines in a writing vortex: I eat, breathe, sleep, and think the book to completion, and all else falls by the wayside until the moment the thing has to be sent off. I must admit to submitting the first draft of the book you hold in your hands at three in the morning. My faithful husband sat nearby plying me with water and gummy bears (you’d be surprised at how effective these can be in maintaining mental strength), with all the candles in our little living room lit to keep me awake and inspired.

  One might assume that after such a late evening, the next day would find me too groggy to have any eye for the autumn beauty of Oxford. But I found my vision heightened instead of dimmed, an experience that felt like a fresh revelation to me. I strolled through water-cool air under a sapphire sky, watched leaves flicker like golden flames in a friendly wind, and felt profoundly grateful as my feet pounded these old Oxford cobbles. What I realized as I walked was that my kindled vision came from the many books I had read afresh during the writing of this manuscript.

  Throughout the long months of writing, I daily immersed myself in rereading the novels that first taught me to love the beauty of God’s good earth, to revel in the gift of existence. Their words lingered in my mind that morning as I encountered the turning trees and remembered Anne’s joyous proclamation, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers” (from Anne of Green Gables). I chuckled at the many characters on the street with the hilarity of Juliet’s letters in the back of my mind (from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society). I made my tea and cake that afternoon steeped in the pert and delicious observations of Prudencia, who found the many teatimes of her new home excessive . . . at first (in The Awakening of Miss Prim).

  Silly as it may seem, I was startled to realize how richly reading had reshaped my vision. It’s the very thing I argue for, but ah, the gift of it as it comes afresh continues to amaze me. And it is a gift. For one of the things I have come to realize in composing this book is the fact that novels like the ones on the following pages are acts of generosity. Each is an offering rooted in the author’s sense of responsibility and gratitude for some goodness or truth deeply perceived.

  In writing about wonder in Book Girl, I have become deeply aware of the fact that I write and live from what I have been generously given. I am a lover of books, a learner, keen for new adventures because so many people before me—my parents, my favorite writers, the friends who pressed good books into my hands, the tutors at Oxford who were faithful to communicate what they had discovered—were generous with their words. They spoke me into wonder. They startled me awake. They took me by the metaphorical hand and pointed at the rainbow just out the window. Consider the list below my way of passing on their grace.

  Remembering by Wendell Berry

  I can’t recommend this as the first Berry novel you should read, and it might seem an odd choice on a list of novels to kindle delight because it opens (very purposefully) by evoking the deep sense of disconnection and disorientation known by Andy Coulter, a middle-aged farmer who is injured, depressed, and estranged from his family in a San Francisco hotel room. As a reader, I felt profoundly disturbed. But that was exactly what I was supposed to feel, because this is a novel of pilgrimage, exploring the isolation and loneliness of life in the modern world. We walk with Andy as he is drawn out of anonymity and back into belonging, as he is “held, though he does not hold” (one of my favorite lines in literature) by the memory of those who were faithful before him, by the knowledge of those who wait in faith back home. In remembering, Andy and the reader are drawn together out of isolation and into the belonging formed by our love of both person and place. The description of gratitude toward the end, where Andy discovers the “blessedness” he has “lived in . . . and did not know” is one of my favorite descriptions of thanks in literature.

  Also by Wendell Berry:

  The Memory of Old Jack

  A Place on Earth

  Jayber Crow

  Fidelity: Five Stories

  All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

  “It’s embarrassingly plain how inadequate language is,” says one character in this arresting novel, but Doerr puts language to work in a way that conveys the height and depth of the world in its splendor. It’s not a happy book, its central characters a reluctant, orphaned recruit to the Nazi army and a blind girl whose village lies in the path of war. But it’s a book that glories in the richness of the world—its beauty, its intricacy, and our own capacity to behold it and be connected through it even amid the atrocities of war.

  The Awakening of Miss Prim by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

  Miss Prim is a neat, modern woman; a competent librarian; and a principled feminist who still considers herself old fashioned. But when she is immersed in a small town where feasts accompany the smallest town meeting, children sprawl in the library reading Latin, and the third item on the agenda at the Feminist Society is to find her a husband, she finds her ideals and assumptions turned on their head. A delightful, slightly tongue-in-cheek critique of the modern age so dotted with accounts of good teatimes I usually feel the urge to bake a cake halfway through a chapter.

  A City of Bells by Elizabeth Goudge

  Henrietta, the heroine of this novel set in the sleepy city and hidden beauty of Wells Cathedral, is one of those characters who makes me feel that the author has glimpsed my soul; Henrietta is touched by the beauty of the world, determined that people should be whole and happy, and also a bit impatient with the processes of redemption. She embodies all this in a story of a tragic and missing poet, a grandfather who is a workaday saint, a mischievous small boy, and her experience of a cathedral world shot through with love.

  The Keeper of the Bees by Gene Stratton-Porter

  Jamie is a wounded veteran of World War I, with an open wound that won’t heal and a heart in about the same state. Unwilling to spend his final days in a tuberculosis ward, he hobbles onto the open road in California for a last taste of freedom. To his shock, he soon finds himself the startled caretaker of a stricken beekeeper’s cottage and discovers that he may not be quite ready to die after all. Porter is in her usual glory here as a strong storyteller for whom God’s good creation is as much a character as the people it challenges, restores, consoles, and slowly heals, like Jamie, whose interest in life intensifies after his meeting with a troubled and mysterious young beauty.

  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

  This is the book I read when I’m in the mood for sheer delight: in books, in friendship, and in the kind of beauty that can endure even amid Nazi vagary. “Reading keeps you from going gaga,” puts one colorful character succinctly, and this is the story of a few brave and imaginative souls on Nazi-occupied Guernsey who talk a friend out of a tight spot by inventing a book club on the spot . . . and decide to make it real. It’s also the story of Juliet, the wry, quirky, book-loving columnist who discovers the tale of the Guernsey Literary Society after the war and decides to write their story. Written entirely as a series of letters between Juliet and various delightful (and maddening) correspondents, this hysterical, dear tale draws both Juliet and the reader into the windswept beauty of Guernsey, into the grief of loss, and into the power of friendship, imagination, and kindness to remake and heal the world. It’s almost an effortless read, but poignant—th
e kind whose world I hate to have to leave at book’s end.

  The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

  The second word in the title gives it all away—this book is a tale of enchantment, not by inexplicable forces of magic, but by the sheer power of beauty. The charming tale of the downtrodden but determined Lottie, who, upon glimpsing an advertisement for a Tuscan villa to be let for the month of April, decides on the spot to take it, convincing three other reluctant and prim British women to join her. Beauty—in house and weathered vine, in golden days and quiet hours—thus begins its transformative work.

  The Journeyman by Elizabeth Yates

  I love this story of a young artistic boy in Colonial times, misunderstood by his family but given the gift of an apprenticeship to a journeyman painter. It’s the kind of book that lingers in imagination and conversation for years. As a young reader, I was deeply intrigued by Jared, a boy gifted differently from those around him who used his remarkable skill to bring beauty into the simple houses of early New England farmers and homesteaders, using his craft to brighten their walls and liven their souls. A story about art and the different strengths by which we may shape the world around us.

  Beauty Speaks Truth: Books about the Arts

  (OR, WHY CREATIVITY IS VITAL TO FAITH)

  FROM THE TIME I was a little girl, I experienced moments of beauty in which I knew that God was real and that he loved me (there were moments of terrifying darkness, too, but that is a longer story to tell). In glimpsing the fire of a Texas sunset, in hearing the strains of a Celtic folk song, in reading about Mary Lennox’s discovery of her secret garden, I knew a thrill of what I can only call assurance—a deep, abiding knowledge of God’s goodness and the sense that his mystery was reaching out specifically to me. As a child, I accepted this grace without question because it was so clearly a gift. It was only as a teenager that I began to question and wrestle with the truth that beauty seemed to tell me. What did it mean that beauty spoke to me? Why did stories help me to understand God in a way theology sometimes didn’t? Was it all right to love art and music, to see creativity as a holy vocation?

  It was in reading the following authors that I was finally able to come to an understanding of the way image and artistry, song and story, participate in the Incarnation, helping to reveal and speak out the reality of Christ to the world. The writers of the books in the following list explore the way that we as humans participate in the creativity of God and understand him through it. Through their words, I have found a striking articulation of the power of beauty to speak forth truth, to help us daily to taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8). I have found celebration, as the artists speak of the way Christians, through the act of creating, participate in bringing the Kingdom of God to bear in the world. I have found a fierce and lovely embrace of beauty as a holy defiance of death, despair, and meaninglessness.

  The following is an eccentric collection; there’s theology, there are essays or works on aesthetics, and there are essays by Christian artists. There are also beautiful books of photography and art that richly affirm the power of beauty to communicate truth. I include them all here because we live in a pragmatic, scientific age that measures reality by what can be observed, listed, and analyzed, and sometimes this mind-set creeps into our spiritual thinking as well. We see some activities as provably holy (church, Bible reading, practical service, financial responsibility), while we see others, such as creativity, music, hospitality, or creation as peripheral to our faith, even frivolous. My goal in including these books is simply to pass along the writers who helped me to see afresh, to embrace beauty as a gift, something we are all called to perceive and create. As you read, may you, too, find joy in a “taste and see” immersion in God’s goodness.

  Imaginative Apologetics: Theology, Philosophy and the Catholic Tradition by Andrew Davison (Editor)

  As you might have gathered from earlier parts of this book, imagination has mattered deeply to me since childhood, largely because it helped me to love and understand a God who both drew me and frightened me, whose beauty I yearned to touch, whose holiness I did not know how to imagine. I often found Aslan more approachable than Jesus. This marvelous collection of essays helped me to understand why and gave me the vocabulary I needed to defend the spiritual relevance and apologetic power of imagination in story and poem, song and painting to awaken both Christian and seeker to a feeling of “homesickness for the ultimate truth.”

  The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet by Thomas Dubay

  I stumbled upon this book on the shelf of a friend in China. I was captivated by the rising, symphonic quality of this writer’s exploration of the beautiful and the fact that in science, truth is often recognizable by its beauty. The most elegant equation is often the correct one. A book that affirms beauty as integral both to the structures of creation and to the nature of God’s revelation, it richly illuminates the Von Balthasar quote on its cover: “Every experience of beauty points to infinity.”

  The Art of God by Ric Ergenbright

  Saint Augustine described the world as a book, and it is in this spirit that photographer Ric Ergenbright presents us with the language of beauty as spoken by the whole of creation. A book that richly affirms the way creation reveals the nature and presence of God, this was a favorite in my home when I was a child. I spent hours poring over the gorgeous images. To this day, I deeply appreciate the splendor of his photography and the depth of his contemplation.

  Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture by Makoto Fujimura

  Fujimura, a contemporary artist, author, and founder of the New York City–based International Arts Movement, has composed this collection of essays, prayers, and reflections on the nature of art and the call of the artist to capture the attention of a world hungry for God. This book has nourished and ministered to many of my friends—some artistic, some just interested in how to bring beauty into faith—helping them to a vision and a vocation as creators.

  Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L’Engle

  This book has been for me, as for many Christian creators, one of the most encouraging, insightful, and vocationally affirming books I’ve read on the spiritual value of creativity and beauty. L’Engle sees creativity not as limited to works of “official” art but as a way to express and embody the life of Christ. Her fascinating comparison of the creative Christian to Mary, the mother of Jesus, as he or she is asked to become a bearer of the work of the Holy Spirit, has encouraged and strengthened me in the vocation of writer as well as that of homemaker, friend, and wife, for as L’Engle so luminously affirms, “In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory.”

  The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris

  This is a recent glory of a picture book written to help modern children reengage with the fading language and ever-present mysteries of the natural landscape. Drawing on a list of words that researchers discovered are absent from the vocabulary of modern children, The Lost Words is a luminous, lyrical book of illustrations that evoke the movement and essence, the ordinary miracle of things like dandelion, otter, bramble, and acorn, drawing its readers into a worldview freshened by wonder and marked by gratitude.

  Seeing Salvation by Neil MacGregor and Erika Langmuir

  A book crammed with some of the greatest depictions of the life of Christ in art, the images in this book were taken from a famed art exhibit of the same title, while the text is a contemplation on the work of the artists who sought to capture the truth of the Christian story. A fascinating glimpse into the way that art has, throughout history, shaped the way we see the work of God.

  Noah’s Ark by Rein Poortvliet

  When my parents discovered that this book was going out of print, they bought a copy for each of their children and saved them for wedding gifts. Mine now sits in an honored spot in my living room, just as it did
in my childhood home—a world of a book created by an artist whose humorous, poignant, vivid insight into creation is imaged in a collection of paintings centered on the story of Noah’s ark. The kind of book that is mesmerizing to young children . . . and the adults looking over their shoulders.

  The Gift of Music: Great Composers and Their Influence by Jane Stuart Smith (with Betty Carlson)

  A rich and varied collection of short biographies of some of the world’s greatest composers, with a particular emphasis on the faith that drove and irradiated their music. A book that celebrates the gift of creativity, it also offers an introduction to classical music for readers ready to delve into that world.

  The Private World of Tasha Tudor by Tasha Tudor and Richard Brown

  Tasha Tudor is one of my heroines: a doughty New England soul who decided she much preferred the clothes, manners, and lifestyle of the early nineteenth century to the vagaries of the modern world. Her home, her clothes, her skill in house crafts of all sorts, and her value for heritage all reflect this proclivity and make her life an object of fascination. But what draws me again and again is the way she rejoices in the beautiful, making the work of the ordinary an art in and of itself, whether with elevenses for tea or in the planting of an extravagant garden. This is a quiet, wry, insightful record of her life as captured by a photographer who was allowed into her lovely world and realized the worth of her way of seeing.