The Irish author on the allure of Lolita, the comfort of Yeats and the power of Winnie-the-Pooh
Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty when I was about eight or nine, sitting in the back of my mother’s parked Mini one hot summer’s day, my legs burning on the red vinyl seat, and bawling because they were putting the bearing rein on Ginger. I learned two things: empathy for living creatures and the power of the first-person narrator.. I used to play it like a game, sliding up and down the various crazy contraptions with Marvin. It never got old. But I did.
That beginning! That middle! That end! I have read it five or six times now and it charts the 180-degree turn my moral compass has performed. At 16, I was cheering on the love story. Now, I read it as the slow assassination of a child.I dutifully read too many of those entrants to the Great American Novel competition – I’m thinking of Philip Roth and John Updike in particular.
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