No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy: Memoirs of a Working-Class Reader by Mark Hodkinson

My wife is a professional chaperone for children and – accompanied by our campervan (and sometimes me!) – is to be found all over the UK on various assignments. One of these took us to Leeds Dock where I walked along the Leeds Liverpool canal while Michelle watched the rain pouring down the windows of a warm, dry TV studio.

And yet, it didn’t feel like that at all to me. I spent some happy – formative - years in the north of England, including Leeds and Sheffield. As a lover of history, the industrial heritage to be observed if only people would look up from their mobiles is truly fascinating. Just along the waterfront an old barge called ‘Marjorie R’ is moored. She used to carry coal to the nearby Thornhill Power Station but now she has opened her doors to the general public as the Hold Fast bookshop.

Wandering around the vast underbelly of Marjorie – which must be some kind of optical illusion – I came across No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy: Memoirs of a Working-Class Reader by Mark Hodkinson. I found the title intriguing (box ticked) and thought it might be enjoyable to revisit my feelings about books and music and place in a similar time period of 70s and 80s revisited by Mark.

For a lot of the time it was just that. Enjoyable reminiscences that resonated in terms of shared experiences if from a bit further away on my part. My dad was a postman and we were a working-class family, but there were always books in our house. My mum read quite prolifically and the library visit each week was one I quickly looked forward to. I wouldn’t say that books were explicitly encouraged, but they were always there if not always affordable.

As I got older, I worked in libraries and information units. One of my first ‘colleagues’ who would have quickly become bypassed by the technology and ‘processes’ Mark refers to when discussing his early career in local journalism. He invited me round to his house once. The only thing I can remember about him, his wife and his house is a bright front room with a single wall completely covered by books.

I was hooked from that moment on and Mark’s acronym: BABLE, or 'Book Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy’ absolutely resonated with me. I too have accumulated far more books – fiction and non-fiction – than I am likely to have time left in my life to actually read. The penny dropped for me just as it did for Mark, and yet we continue. I have two such rooms now with floor-to-ceiling walls of books.

There are some lovely flashbacks to Mark’s time with his grandfather who offered words of penetrating wisdom (in the sense that it got through the self-confident, swagger of youth and made it to his/our hearts) even as his mind was being lost. I also enjoyed the various tableaux Mark describes and could almost be back there myself.

For me, the message of this one book that all books provide us with a refuge is the one I identified with the most. Books, for Mark and I, are friends that won’t let you down. They may enlighten; disappoint; make you laugh and make you cry but they will always be the same. They wait patiently for us to engage with them, recognising as they look out at us from the shelves where they sit, that, although our appearances age and the depth of knowledge we store away increases through our lives until we begin to forget it all again, books won’t let you down. The jackets may get a bit dusty – creased or torn even – but they remain moored to our existence and us to theirs. They are true friends.

I think Mark labours the point about being an exception to the rule of what was expected of young men – if anything at all – in that part of the country. Yes, he ‘went south’ and it worked for him as a successful journalist, writing for The Times, Guardian and other leading broadsheets (is that still a word?). Yes, we applaud his success and admire his undoubted ability to write. However, I didn’t warm to him, and I found the last fifth of the book quite self-indulgent. There are only so many times you can bemoan the disadvantages of your upbringing in terms of time and place.

It was an interesting read, and I did hold fast right until the end, but I’m not sure how much more I learned about being a working-class exception than I did when coming across an old coal barge in the pouring rain one morning in Leeds. Not a bad read, but certainly not exceptional.

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