A review by ohnoflora
The Child That Books Built by Francis Spufford
3.0
The two middle chapters are very good: 'The Island', on Narnia and escaping into fantasy, especially, and 'The Town' on the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and the ambivalent communities to be found in boarding schools, real and fictional.
The rest is... frustrating. Spufford's literary analysis is strong, particularly on Narnia and C. S. Lewis, which he seems to have an affinity with. He is less strong when it comes to showing how his own life circumstances impacted on his reading, or vice versa. He has a tendency to drop an inflammatory or provocative sentence and just leave it, without any exploration of or insight into why he feels this way. His comments on disabled people, for example, are despicable and serve no purpose except for some solipsistic self-flagellation: "look at how terrible I am". And yet, there is no awareness that these thought processes are toxic or that he is attempting to change them.
And the less said on the chapter, "The Hole", the better.
It's a shame, because there is a lot in here that is very good, and I do like hearing from other readers about the books that mean a lot to them. However, this is not a book that I will be returning to.
The rest is... frustrating. Spufford's literary analysis is strong, particularly on Narnia and C. S. Lewis, which he seems to have an affinity with. He is less strong when it comes to showing how his own life circumstances impacted on his reading, or vice versa. He has a tendency to drop an inflammatory or provocative sentence and just leave it, without any exploration of or insight into why he feels this way. His comments on disabled people, for example, are despicable and serve no purpose except for some solipsistic self-flagellation: "look at how terrible I am". And yet, there is no awareness that these thought processes are toxic or that he is attempting to change them.
And the less said on the chapter, "The Hole", the better.
It's a shame, because there is a lot in here that is very good, and I do like hearing from other readers about the books that mean a lot to them. However, this is not a book that I will be returning to.