Strange, Norrel, and Mom

By Frances McCann

Strange, Norrel, and Mom

Today, which has existed for all of three hours and 16 minutes upon time of writing, I have been terribly preoccupied with my mother, or I suppose preoccupied by her absence. I stopped by my father’s house this past weeked to drop off my brother following his three day stay with me. While at my father’s house, I fingered the spines of books my parents had acquired throughout my youth which previously I could not have even pretended to care about, when two novels caught my eye: one with a striking green and yellow spine, and the other whose spine was familiar to me.

The former novel, Boy, Snow, Bird, I read in about three days. It reminded me of Passing by Nella Larsen. The latter novel was Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel by Susanna Clarke. I remember this book from my teen years quite well despite my never actually having read it. There was a period of time, the exact span of which I cannot say for children are dreadfully terrible time-keepers, in which wherever my mother was, this thick black book would appear. The book would sleep next to her at night, and help prepare my brother’s and my breakfast in the morning, before dropping us off at school. I would forget the book ever existed until I saw it again answering Trebek’s Daily Double with us in the evening.

Now, as I stated earlier, I really couldn’t care about the books my parents read, but this novel was peculiar to me because it didn’t allow me to read it. The book was and is very thick due to its 900+ page count and of course my little hands couldn’t fit around its girth. And when I would truly convince myself the book wasn’t worth my time, I would hear my mother groan and wail from another room, complaining about the writing in the novel or its characters or its plot. I was always surprised to see her turn to the next page as soon as the last syllable of her lamenting left her mouth, her glasses firmly pushed up her nose and her eyes darting back and forth as she read every word. It seemed as if she was going to make the book better through sheer force of will. She always did say that’s how she kept planes in the sky, by forcing them to obey her as she would force her children to brush their teeth and eat their vegetables.

I cannot remember if my mother had read the book once and decided to read it again or if this was the first time she met Strange and Norrel. Either way, her makeshift bookmark sits almost in the exact middle of the novel to this day. I don’t think this was the last book she ever read, or the book she read in her hospital bed, if she even had the strength to read at all, but the likelihood of my mother never finishing a book is equal to the likelihood of my mother dying. To my knowledge, she always finished books, and movies, and comics, and tv shows. To my knowledge she was always going to just be.

I pause here to contemplate my next line and my cursor blinks at me and I don’t know why but it infuriates me but calms me too, like it wants me to keep writing but knows I need a little time.

This book is strange to me. I have only read the first page and I don’t know if I want to read the rest. To me, it always existed as a black-jacketed, hardcover resting somewhere in my house; more of a symbol of my mother or maybe a part of her. I never thought of it as something I could read and I think I want to preserve what it was to me. If I read it, and the 100 or so words I’ve read so far make for an intriguing introduction, then the book will change meaning. Instead of seeing it in my mother’s hands or on her nightstand I’ll see it at my desk at work or in my own hands that are much different than hers. Are objects like videotapes or records? One imbues them with something that means something to them but if someone else gets in possession of the object, they can damage it, causing skips and scratches and its missing pieces of information. And what happens when the new owner records something over the previous data? Where does the original information go?

But I suppose that original information, my mother’s relationship with this book never goes away. My experiences with it are tacked on and added to its history. I will continue to read and I know I will pause again when I reach the halfway point at which she stopped, and when I do I will remember she is not gone.

Frances McCann is a fourth-year at Louisiana State University majoring in English lit and creative writing with a minor in women's, gender, and sexuality studies. Her hopes are to go to graduate school and become a creative writing professor.