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There’s nothing like finding a book that makes me read for
hours at a time; one that I look forward to going back to after being away from
it for too long, or re-read without hesitation. I have a tendency to linger in
bookstores and libraries, browsing titles. While many people fall in love with
covers, synopsis, and maybe authors they’re use to reading, I tend to fall in
love with first sentences and paragraphs. I like to feel I’m in conversation
with the author and the people they write about. More than that, reading fuels
my writing, my craft. It’s the only thing that pacifies my anxieties about
writing. After completing a project, I like to just relax with reading a well
written book with fleshed out characters, reasonable prose, and a good plot.
{Nicole Dennis-Benn is the
author of the highly acclaimed debut novel,HERE COMES THE SUN (Norton/Liveright,
July 2016), which has received a starred Kirkus Review and is deemed one of the
best books to read this summer and beyond by New York Times, NPR, BBC,
BuzzFeed, Book Riot, Bookish, Miami Herald, Elle, O Magazine, Marie Claire,
Entertainment Weekly, Flavorwire, After Ellen, BookPage, Cosmopolitan, Brooklyn
Magazine, among others. New York Times Book reviewer, Jennifer Senior
describes HERE COMES THE SUN as a “lithe, artfully-plotted debut”;
Pulitzer Prize finalist, Laila Lalami, as well as Booklist have deemed it a
"fantastic debut"; and Man Booker Prize winner, Marlon James says
“[Here Comes the Sun] is a story waiting to be told”. Dennis-Benn has also been
recently nominated for the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her work has appeared in The New York
Times, ELLE Magazine, Electric Literature, Lenny Letter, Catapult, Red Rock Review, Kweli Literary Journal, Mosaic, Ebony,
and the Feminist Wire. Nicole Dennis-Benn has an MFA in Creative Writing
from Sarah Lawrence College
and has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell Colony,
Hedgebrook, Lambda, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Hurston/Wright, and Sewanee
Writers' Conference. Dennis-Benn was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica.
She lives with her wife in Brooklyn,
New York.}
I am an obsessive completist reader. Which is to say I read much
like a collector amasses coins or comic books or rust-covered cast iron pans.
I’ll read a book, and if I more than mildly enjoy it, there’s a good chance
I’ll move on to another work by the same writer. Often, I’ll even follow an
author’s oeuvre in chronological order, watching her/his skills grow then fade
over time. I’ll then read a biography, followed by letters and unpublished
diaries (I also do this with directors/movies). Last summer I did this with
Flannery O’Connor. This summer I’m afraid I’ll do the same with Carson
McCullers. Sometimes I convince myself that this is a productive, healthy way
to read, and maybe it is. Taking in all that remains of a writer, in a way,
allows you to live the life of that writer. But often it feels like a
compulsion.
I know where this drive comes from, or at least I think I do. My
grandmother read not only constantly but with a similar consistency. During
family visits I’d stare up at her tall bookshelves and see all of Agatha
Christie, every Dick Francis, each title by James Clavell (she enjoyed breezy,
British-y beach reads obviously)—all neatly arranged, like in a real library, throughout numerous rooms
of her house. One summer, after telling her how much I enjoyed reading Pudd’nhead Wilson, she bought me the
complete works of Mark Twain, in these matching hardcover volumes that shined
so beautiful on my childhood bookshelves. I read all of Twain that summer, from
The Innocents Abroad to all the
lesser Tom Sawyers. But when the
first volume of Twain’s Autobiography
was published in 2010 I could not bring myself to complete my collection.
Obsessions fade away, often with an intensity matching the way they once burned
so bright. Perhaps I’ll return to Twain someday—I might even plow through some
Dick Francis!—and that old compulsion could be renewed. But I’m hoping there’s
a chance that I can reread Pudd’nhead
Wilson and leave it at that.
{Rien
Fertel is the author of Imagining the Creole City and, most recently, The One True Barbecue. He lives in New Orleans.}
Recent reviews for The Sea Singer can be found in:
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"The sun was high now, all the green of the
morning shot with sunlight, plankton awash in a sea of gold."
