a novel approach to reading and learning

One of my friends doesn’t read novels. Why read about something that never happened, he asks? His preferred reading is history and biography, trying to understand the world and human behaviour by understanding the lives and times, the struggles and realities, of people in other places, at other times. However that only works if it is good history and good biography. Leaving aside whether anyone can or should write objective, impartial history – and whether even if possible, that would give us more insight than the passionately told narrative of what ‘happened’, the truth is,good history, good biography and a good novel are each capable of deepening our understanding, broadening our sympathy, stretching our imagination, sharpening our moral understanding, and extending our knowledge of who we are, where we are and perhaps even why.

I am an unembarrassed novel reader. Literature of the imagination, stories that grow out of the rich loam of human relationships, excursions into other times and places and lives, enable us to enter worlds otherwise inaccessible, and to observe and consider what other people’s lives, (and perhaps our own) are about. I used the word ‘good’ – not exactly a term of academic precision, thank goodness! Novel reading for me has nothing to do with analytic literary deconstruction – a good novel is capable of doing for us some of the work mentioned above:

deepening our understanding,

broadening our sympathy,

stretching our imagination,

sharpening our moral understanding,

extending our knowledge of who we are, where we are and perhaps even why.

Limiting myself to just one book by some of my favourite authors, here is a list of good novels that I’ve read more than once.

The Gift of Asher Lev, Chaim Potok

The Deptford Trilogy, Robertson Davies

The Patchwork Planet, Anne Tyler

A Burnt Out Case, Graham Greene

Father Melancholy’s Daughter / Evensong, Gail Godwin

Grace Notes, Bernard MacLaverty

An Equal Music, Vikram Seth

Unless, Carol Shields

Pigs in Heaven, Barbara Kingsolver

The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Exupery