Five Favourite Comfort Reads.

Like many other people, I suspect, something I’ve struggled with in the last year has been reading. More specifically, I’ve struggled with what to read. In a time when I thought I would get through so many of the books sitting unread on my shelves, the irony is that I haven’t wanted to read any of them. I haven’t wanted to read the classic novels I thought I’d get to when I had ‘time,’ and I haven’t wanted to read frothy romance novels either (although, of course, I still LOVE them!) What I’ve been after is that most eluive of beasts, the ideal ‘comfort read.’ In the past, this has always meant a fictional or historical world I can escape into for a while, which is substantial without being difficult and fun without being too flimsy, full of characters I love, as well as featuring a very happy ending. While I’ve found that this still mostly stands, the books I’ve found comfort in this year have been quite diverse and the ways they have soothed, calmed or distracted me have been quite different too. Here are five of my favourites from this past year:

1. 84, Charing Cross Road and The Duchess of Bloomsbury (Helene Hanff).

84, Charing Cross Road is the publication of a twenty-year correspondence between Helene Hanff, a ‘poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books,’ living in New York and Frank Doel, chief buyer for Marks and Co., a bookshop on London’s Charing Cross Road. Beginning in the 1950s, Helene writes in the first instance to request books she cannot find in America and their correspondence soon becomes friendly, covering books, writers and details of their lives. Helen’s witty, incandescent personality and Frank’s dry wit make perfect gentle reading, and the book was not only an excellent reminder of the sheer joy of sitting down with a book and a cup of coffee, but it is also inspiring – sending me off to my shelves to see if I had any of the volumes mentioned. The sequel, The Duchess of Bloomsbury, is Helene’s diary of her eventual literary pilgrimage to London and it is equally wonderful, a chaotic, sparkling and moving travelogue full of friendship, loss and literature.

2. Mapp and Lucia – E.F. Benson.

This is my current read, and already, I don’t want it to end! The recently widowed Mrs Emmeline Lucas (known to friends as Lucia), social queen of the village of Riseholme, takes a house by the sea in Tilling for the summer and meets her match in the current doyenne, Miss Elizabeth Mapp. There’s nothing more comforting than this gentle and hilarious battle of social one-up-manship, set in the drawing rooms and garden rooms of 1930s England, where infighting is polite and underhand, where weapons are invitations to garden parties and recipes for lobster, and where strategies are drawn up at ‘little dinners’ and over games of bridge. Almost all of the characters are ghastly and wonderful at the same time and you can’t help rooting for Lucia and her faithful right hand man, Georgie as they try to wrest the social crown of Tilling from Miss Mapp. Lucia’s world is one I don’t want to say ‘au reservoir,’ to anytime soon.

3. Few Eggs and No Oranges (The Diaries of Vere Hodgeson)

It sometimes strikes me as strange that this volume of diaries from an ‘ordinary Londoner,’ living through World War Two should have been so comforting this year and, of course, living in a world affected by a global pandemic is a very different situation to living in a world affected by a global conflict. However, there has been something oddly soothing in reading about someone else living under restrictions, facing a kind of daily danger, being at the mercy of decisions taken by her government and not knowing what will come next, even if it occurred in a different historical period. Vere’s resilient spirit, common sense, good humour and honesty, plus, the knowledge that the conflict she lived through came to an end, have proved a panacea to the anxiety and uncertainty of the past year.

4. The Star of Kazan – Eva Ibbotson.

It’s always a bittersweet experience to start a new-to-me Eva Ibbotson. I’m always excited, knowing that I’ll love the book. However, at the same time, I know that the pool of books I have left to read by her is then smaller. Reading ‘The Star of Kazan,’ was a pure joy though. It’s the story of Annika, who was discovered in a church as a baby and now lives in pre-World War I Vienna with her adoptive mother, who is housekeeper to three eccentric professors. Kind and sweet to everyone, Annika’s life is changed when her beautiful and aristocratic mother arrives to claim her. But not all is as it seems…… I was swept up into this book with its beautifully crafted plot, its very real characters and its descriptions of places – Vienna, with its squares and cakes and Lippizaner horses, and the remote castle Annika is taken to, with its overgrown gardens and eerie, empty rooms. Eva Ibbotson’s books are always so rich and vivid and this was no different, providing a buffer from the rest of the world for a few days.

5. Ayesha at Last – Uzma Jaluddin.

Of course, this list would be incomplete without at least one romantic comedy and this is one of my favourites. A loose re-telling of Pride and Prejudice set in the Muslim community of contemporary Toronto, this book has everything I want in a romance novel. The two leading characters are fully rounded and complicated people, shaped by their pasts and families and with real hopes and ambitions. There are plenty of misunderstandings, mistakes and missed chances as well as a plot full of twists and turns. Aspiring poet and reluctant teacher, Ayesha, is in no hurry to marry, despite the well-intentioned nagging of her family. Then she meets Khalid, conservative, reserved and irritatingly handsome, and things begin to change (except that, to begin with, he thinks she’s someone else and she thinks he’s a judgemental bore!) There are wonderful family interactions, terrible bosses, difficult parents, endless literary references and one perfect cooking scene! Although I read this on average about once a year, I always find it a comfort to dive back into it, being excited about spending time with beloved characters. It’s immersive, incredibly romantic and a thoroughly lovely book, full of redemption, forgiveness and true love.