Bookworm

A book review of Bookworm by Lucy Mangan.

Bookworm by Lucy Mangan has a sub title; A Memoir of Childhood Reading.

It’s a perfect description for an almost perfect book. A book that’s delightful, witty, interesting and unadulteratedly opinionated. It’s the kind of book that you’ll read again and again. I’ve already read it twice—and I shall read it again.

Lucy Mangan is a self-confessed bookworm and loner; always has been. She has 10,000 books crammed into a home that she shares with her husband and, at the time of writing the book, her six year old son. Who, to Lucy’s despair, is showing no sign of having inherited the bookworm gene. 10,000 books! All crammed into Billy bookcases apparently.

She grew up in South East London, went to Cambridge, studied English and then qualified as a solicitor. She never practiced, but instead worked in a bookshop—of course—until she got a job at The Guardian newspaper.

The history of Lucy’s reading began very young, with books that her father used to bring home from work on a Friday evening and then read to her during the week. They used to spend many hours in the children’s section of her local library. For every book loving child their local library becomes their second home. As it was for me, also in South East London, albeit about five miles from Lucy’s.

What I found interesting, when discovering all the books that she’d read during her childhood, was that I couldn’t recall many of the titles. Or indeed remember many that I can actually remember reading. But when Lucy expanded on each plot I found little light bulbs popping on in my head.

And I guarantee that you will too.

She weaves into the story of her childhood reading some funny anecdotes about her family. Her father was a quiet man, a theatre director. Her mother, a gynaecologist who ran her clinics—and her family—with military precision. Lucy grew up during the 1970s, when nuclear annihilation was a distinct possibility. And she recalls coming home from school one day, in tears, seeking reassurance from her mother, convinced that a makeshift shelter under the kitchen table couldn’t withstand a nuclear explosion.

“It will if I build it”.

Enough said.

Her younger sister was very different, Lucy relates. At a time when Lucy was reading The Phantom Tollbooth in the corner and hadn’t moved for hours, her sister was busy behind the sofa planning a power station and building her first computer.

As you would expect in any book on the history of children’s fiction, there are a fair few pages devoted to the prolific Enid Blyton (186 books, believe it or not). Like millions of other children, Lucy devoured, amongst others, The Famous Five:—

‘Alpha-male Julian, dickless Dick, poor Anne, proto-feminist / Sapphic role model George and her loyal, rabbit-loving dog Timmy, a character only marginally simpler than the rest’.

Fairly accurate characterisations, I would say!

The trail of childhood reading comes to an end in senior school, at a time when she finds herself gravitating across the foyer of her local library more and more often, until, eventually, she  leaves the children’s section behind forever.

By that point she’d even made a friend or two!

Buy this gorgeous book for friends and family who have young children.

Or who are planning to have children.

Or grandparents.

Or… Oh, for heavens sake, just buy it. It’s brilliant.

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