Vybarr Cregan-Reid

But there was little that was normal about mine and our family’s relationship with Dad. I certainly didn’t love him, whatever that meant.

A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort … Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people—people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.

real love, love as ‘strong as death’, is that which is made of companionship and passion

how far I’d come and how much reading had changed me, what

What healed all that damage for me in the end was quite simple. Reading

After I’d been rescued by books in my twenties, I read at home, on my way to work, at work, on my lunch break, on my way back home

Later on in life, I might boast that I managed to read Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin on the same day as J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, but on that day, I read far more than I had at any previous point in my life.

processing our thoughts, feelings and interpreting the world.

Its remit

enabling the student to become an independent and critical thinker

And there’s a damaged character in the novel: John. He is put to work by the group and is, like George R. R. Martin’s Hodor, simple, well-meaning, easily led and strong as a rhino. ‘Where you going now?’ is all he can say, and he repeats it throughout the novel.