So, for me, it’s been a slow week, reading wise. This is the problem with December, there’s always so much to do that sometimes your more, well, “intellectual” activities get slightly curtailed. But since it is the season and all that, let me talk about one of my favourite Christmas books, not because it’s all about Christmas, but because Christmas is one of its themes.
You probably know Ann M. Martin, if you grew up in the 90s and were searching for books about teens. Just as Francine Pascal changed the way we thought about blonde twins, Martin pretty much changed the way we thought about babysitters. I’m sure millions of girls all over the US decided to form babysitting clubs after the girls in the series, but we here in India, being blessed with excellent ayahs (and not that much love for children, though we did like reading about them) just contended ourselves with dreaming about making our own clothes, or calling things that were very cool: “chilly”. (All these being things that the girls in the series The Babysitter’s Club did.) Anyway, since I associated Martin with the series, I didn’t realise she had also written other things. Into adulthood, I found that a lot of the Babysitter’s books were ghost written, which probably explains how she had time to do other things.
One of these “things”, was a book called With You And Without You. No, not the U2 song, but an incredibly poignant coming of age story about a young girl whose father dies one Christmas and the year after that, as the family deals with it. It’s actually pretty well done, not dumbed down for younger readers. One day, Mr O’Hara discovers he has a late stage of cancer, the family — Liza (the protagonist) and her siblings (two sisters, one brother) and her mother — have to suddenly adjust to this. The entire first half of the book is his battle and eventual death to cancer, and the second half (one year later) is how the family dealt with it. There’s such sad passages in the book that sometimes your throat constricts, but on the whole it has an optimistic message. Life can go on, even if you think it can’t, even if your world has changed.
Okay, so it’s not the most holiday spirit book I can think of, but it does play up the fact that the holiday season — any holiday, really — is made worse when someone you love is no longer there to enjoy it with you. And learning to celebrate anew, learning that it’s okay to start letting go, this is what this book is about. It’s a sad book, but it’s true, and real, and heartfelt, and that’s why I think you should read it.
The writer is an author