Comfort Reading

What do you turn to when you need comforting? I'm partial to re-reading a familiar book. A book that will delight, but not surprise me. It can have a bittersweet ending (84, Charing Cross Road, by Helen Hanff) or be unabashedly romantic (Beauty, by Robin McKinley). It can be heartbreakingly sad (Refuge, by Terry Tempest Williams) or laugh-out-loud funny (Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott). I'm going to choose the book depending on whether I need tears or laughter, and I'm going to get what I need. Predictability is key with comfort reading.

I have to love the main character, and I do mean LOVE. I have to know who that person is and that this ending is right for them at this point in their life. In Izzy, Willy Nilly, by Cynthia Voigt, the protagonist is a 15-year-old cheerleader squarely on her way to becoming one of the popular kids. A single date with a senior changes everything and propels her development from shallow Izzy who chooses to go out with a boy for the status to Isobel, a young woman learning who she is apart from friends and family. She doesn't "get the guy" in the end. No, she gets something more; she gets what she needs -- herself.

Humor is good. It can alleviate whatever it is I'm distressed about, and even my saddest comfort reads have moments with laughter, for example Carol Shields's Unless. Reta Winters is a successful translator and author whose oldest daughter disappears. As Reta tries to make sense of her daughter's choices she views them through the lens of her own experience and blames the patriarchy. Peppered throughout the story are the scathing letters Reta has written but not sent, hilariously pointing out the idiocy of our blatantly sexist culture.

A couple movies have sneaked onto my comfort list -- I adore Jane Austen. I've read her novels several times each, but when I'm depressed she's little too much work. So then I pull out Persuasion with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds. Anne Eliot's transformation from worn spinster to vital and desirable woman is subtly and masterfully portrayed by Root. It's not that Anne changes; no, she is steadfast. It is that the people around her (and the viewer) begin to recognize her depth. Closeups of hands and shifting focal points heighten tensions, felt but unspoken. I know everyone thinks Colin Firth is THE quintessential Austen hero, but I'll take Hinds as Captain Wentworth any day. All action and certainty only barely concealing devastating heartache.

I've experienced every one of these stories -- watched, read or listened to -- too many times to count. And every time they help me through whatever emotional wreckage I'm mired in. It's the familiarity, the absolute rightness of the ending, the humor that helps me through . . . and it's allowed me to stop sucking my thumb.