What’s your oldest book? The one that’s so well thumbed, it’s on the brink of falling part (which is a devastating thought)?
My very oldest book is Paddington Goes to the Sales by Michael Bond, dating back to 1976. A favourite in childhood. But my oldest ‘grown-up’ book… that’s The Color Purple by Alice Walker.
My edition was published in 1986 by The Women’s Press, a tie-in edition with the 1985 film. The price on the back cover: £3.95. To think paperbacks once cost £3.95!
It’s an old book. Worn. Somewhat yellowed. Some loose pages. It was second hand when I bought it, back in 1996, and I annotated it during my read with (no doubt a deliberate choice) purple biro. Which is sacrilegious, yes, but was necessary since this was an A level English text.
I’ve had this book for nearly 30 years now. It has come with me through every house move since – and there have been SO MANY. Boxed and unboxed over and over, along with other books, some of which have been keepers, some not. Placed on a shelf. Taken down sometimes, opened – and the book always falls open to the same page.
THE page. The one with the words that reached out and grabbed me and shook me when I first read them.
This. To 16-year-old me, this was the most bold and powerful writing.
Celie and Shug’s whole conversation about God was huge for me. No one in my life (and especially not in the church services I was taken to in my childhood) had ever suggested that God may not, in fact, be ‘big and old and tall and greybearded and white’. The idea that ‘God is inside you and inside everyone else’ and ‘it want to be loved’… the idea that God is in nature, is nature…
This was a lot for 16-year-old me to take in. It made me think, it made me feel. It made me want to write.
I’ve kept this book close to me ever since, because of the beauty and power of the writing.
And because it’s a reminder to me, when I get lost, to look for the colour purple in a field. When I do, whatever’s happening in my life, I feel a little less lost and alone.
PS: In case you’re wondering about Paddington Goes to the Sales, here it is. Bought for the princely sum of ten pence from Hertford Library – by my granny, I imagine, who lived in Hertford.
