Without the past to cast its long shadow, might you see the future more clearly?

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.

Once upon a time there was a fairy godmother, but the rest of the time there was none. This story is about one of those other times.

What better way to get to know someone than through her choice and treatment of books?

I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy

Sometimes you can know things. Things about yourself. Things from before you can remember.

And sometimes then he sat with us for an hour or so, sharing our limbo, listening while I read. Books from any shelf, opened at any page, in which I would start and finish anywhere, mid-sentence sometimes. Wuthering Heights ran into Emma, which gave way to The Eustace Diamonds, which faded into Hard Times, which ceded to The Woman in White. Fragments. It didn't matter. Art, its completeness, its formedness, its finishedness, had no power to console. Words, on the other hand, were a lifeline.