Books have always been Linda Grant's friends; they made her the writer she is. So why did she decide to murder her library?
'Everything is wrong. Three-quarters of the way into my life I’ve had the ground taken from under my feet.' Photograph: David Levene
I am moving house. I am moving from the spacious flat I have lived in for 19 years, a corner house, very bright and full of windows, a place of flights of stairs and landings and hallways, no room on the same level as another. There has always been space for more books, you could tuck in a few shelves in all kinds of places. I had some built by a carpenter when I moved here. "These aren't going anywhere," he said, as he applied brackets to the wall.
But however many shelves were built there were still never enough. The books in alphabetical rows were overgrown by piles of new books, doubled in front. Books multiplied, books swarmed; they were a papery population explosion. When they had exhausted the shelves, they started to take over the stairs. You cannot have a taste for minimalist decor if you seriously read books.
For many weeks before I left the building, I sorted them out. The decision about what would stay and what would go, live or die, began with kindness and ended in rage and ruthlessness. I have a pair of library steps I bought in an antique shop in Cornwall and schlepped back to London, which I climbed every afternoon and scanned the shelves. What I saw, swelling with self-important pride was evidence of how I constructed my own intellectual history through reading. Here is Proust. Here is Jean Rhys. Here is Milton. Here isn't Henry James because I have never been able to remember the beginning of his sentences by the time I get to the end.
Here is JK Rowling. Here is Jilly Cooper. This is a library that tells you everything about its owner, that doesn't conceal the shameful reads, the low taste. Here are first editions, bought at abe.com, of my childhood favourites, the ballet and riding books of Lorna Hill, which taught me about ambitious, arty girls from Northumberland who went to London, became prima ballerinas, married conductors and lived in smart flats in a St John's Wood mansion block with a service restaurant.
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But however many shelves were built there were still never enough. The books in alphabetical rows were overgrown by piles of new books, doubled in front. Books multiplied, books swarmed; they were a papery population explosion. When they had exhausted the shelves, they started to take over the stairs. You cannot have a taste for minimalist decor if you seriously read books.For many weeks before I left the building, I sorted them out. The decision about what would stay and what would go, live or die, began with kindness and ended in rage and ruthlessness. I have a pair of library steps I bought in an antique shop in Cornwall and schlepped back to London, which I climbed every afternoon and scanned the shelves. What I saw, swelling with self-important pride was evidence of how I constructed my own intellectual history through reading. Here is Proust. Here is Jean Rhys. Here is Milton. Here isn't Henry James because I have never been able to remember the beginning of his sentences by the time I get to the end.
Here is JK Rowling. Here is Jilly Cooper. This is a library that tells you everything about its owner, that doesn't conceal the shameful reads, the low taste. Here are first editions, bought at abe.com, of my childhood favourites, the ballet and riding books of Lorna Hill, which taught me about ambitious, arty girls from Northumberland who went to London, became prima ballerinas, married conductors and lived in smart flats in a St John's Wood mansion block with a service restaurant.
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