Parts 2 & 3: Reading Mara and Dann

Dear Reader, I cheated you. This spiderweb's thread of trust that twangs between us? I danced on it. Stomp-style, not Swan Lake. Oh, that's called taking the high ground by jumping up and down on a thread in the middle of a sandstorm? Ok, then that's how I cheated you.

It's a metaphor.

No, I can't really dance on a spiderweb thread.

See, we have an arrangement between us: I post and you read. Sometimes I post and you read a year later because it popped up in a web search and you thought, lookee, another angsty literature major/writer/editor/publisher/nihilist who has taken the option of publishing her opinions without being peer reviewed.

If you could read before I could post, would we be using quantum computers? Or would you be like Kevin Spacey in that movie called Sum'in' Sum'in'? Or Bruce Willis in 12 Monkeys?

The pet guinea pig called My Point has nudged us home. While reading Mara and Dann, I wrote multiple posts. In my head. Yes, on the inside of my skull in smelly permanent market. Despite this, I can't recall a single one. Not so permanent, or so permanent they have sunk into the fleshy folds of my brain.

I finished Dann and Mara at least a week ago. Since then I have been restless. What now? The conclusion is double-edged: will we leave the characters in stasis or do we choose to hear a matching restlessness in the tone of Dann's voice? Also, what do I read next? I could choose Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, but I don't want to pollute either with proximity to the other.

I paced along my bookshelf, read a set of satirical essays, paced some more, eyed Ulysses again (now that would exorcise Lessing's dusty, starving refugees from my brain) and, without looking directly at it, pulled The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog ('General Dann' at least five times the rest of the type).

As I crawled into bed (lots of pillows to arrange in just the right geometric puzzle, y'know), I thought perhaps I had picked up the wrong one - the spines of a couple of other books look the same: dusted, with one or two purposeful figures, long titles. I was relieved. I would read whatever else it was because it wanted me to. (Self-justification is a wonderland of talking creatures and bullying objects. It's where the tooth fairy comes from.)

You know what happened, because you too come from this magical land. Or you are versed in the conventions of different types of text in different media. Or you just know I like to string you along, while really wanting to tell you my point. (Even reading is its own story.)

The average-sized, average-weight paperback with the sandblasted spine was The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog. (While the cover of Mara and Dann is a classic Vintage design, with bars of gold and black, and one simple dominating image. The card stock is lighter, I think, but feels luxurious. The paper too: thinner but silky. A reader knows this is Literature of Some Weight (excuse the pun)).

Now, I was in my own sandstorm (you can replace 'sand' with an appropriate word), partly of my own making. But, and tell me if I'm alone here (knock once on your computer screen for 'yes'), deep in the recesses of my brain, next to the other posts I 'wrote', I believe everything is my fault. War, poverty, spilt ice cream. So, in my mind (but not in reality, because the upper echelons of my brain are rational), it is up to me to fix everything. Because clearly I am the only grown-up in sight. (That's 10-year-old me talking.)

At first the book was a paperweight I used to exercise my fingers and thumb. (A Kindle switches off after five minutes, which is an annoying reminder you aren't reading. Amazon can do many things, but not fix that.) Then I started to read because no one puts me in a corner, and gorged on images of war, poverty... and a puppy.

In Mara and Dann, the relationship between brother and sister is a powerful counter to the sandstorms of war and poverty around them. For me, it is the most important theme (but not the only - that would be dull) in the novel. This is up for some interesting debate, when you finish the book. The snow dog is that for me in the second novel (so far. If anything happens to that dog, I will find a portal of crazy into that world and maim the person who did it. And I don't have much (real...) experience in maiming, so it could get ugly).

Ms Doris Lessing's experiments in dystopian (is it postapocalyptic if you don't know what happened and whether everyone really did die and aren't holed up somewhere in Asia? And when an entire continent survived...?) landscape are dark but solidly knitted together. They accept the stupidities of human nature but offer some hope in the individual who is tried and found... to be a survivor. (This is a flash-summary (except, like, expanded) of what the posts stinking up my inner brain would have looked like.)

These books remind me that the world is, war and poverty aside, mostly a sandstorm (for many of us, at least). But that the world is also something to explore. If you are curious, you will experience many things, not always pleasant, but the trick is to maintain your distance, be an individual and be curious.

More to come. No, really this time. I vow on the twanging spiderweb thread. And my pillows and permanent marker. Ok and the guinea pig.