<\/p>\n
I studied William Golding’s Lord of the Flies<\/em> when I was at school.<\/p>\n Some years later, I saw a copy in a second-hand book store for 50 cents, and thought I would give it a second go, as an adult.<\/p>\n According to the handwritten inscription on the cover – and again on the first page – the book had been previously owned by Sherrill S—–, Leaving Year. Sherrill was obviously an English student, as she had annotated the book with her little notes and observations.<\/p>\n I am not someone who marks up books myself. I recall doing it to one of my textbooks, once, but it was only in sheer frustration with the fool that had been permitted by a publisher to call himself an author.<\/p>\n As I sat down to read, I turned straight to the start of the story on page 7.<\/p>\n The third sentence on the page was underlined… neatly… with a ruler… and in the margin was a little pearl of Sherrill’s wisdom: “Metaphor”<\/p>\n I sighed to myself. The sentence did in fact contain a metaphor – in fact, I counted no less than two in that very sentence. If every simile and metaphor, every use of irony and alliteration was going to be underlined, this was going to be a painful experience.<\/p>\n As so it proceeded. The speech of the character Piggy was circled, and connected with an arrow to the inscription “Piggy’s speech.” The term “Home Counties” was underlined, with a note that this was “round about London”. Another sentence fragment was neatly underlined with the cryptic comment “wind sheet”.<\/p>\n And that was just the first page. It turns out that Sherrill was quite the one for documenting her thoughts in books. I literally could not open the book without coming across two or three such comments on each page.<\/p>\n Sherrill was, however, a quick student. To my delight, her perceptiveness grew quickly, until by the time I was three-quarters of the way through the book, I was looking forward to seeing what Sherrill thought. <\/p>\n “Crucifixion. Jesus.” Why, yes, Sherrill. It is<\/em> allegorical. I didn’t notice that reference before! <\/p>\n “Stressing permanence of nature.” Interesting idea, but I am not sure I see it. It’s a shame you’re not here to defend your point of view.<\/p>\n By the end of the book, I think I got a lot out of Sherrill’s perspective. It was like being in a tiny, uni-directional book club.<\/p>\n So this is a toast to the mysterious friend, Sherrill. Perhaps, just maybe, one day, in a second-hand bookshop, I’ll pick up another one of your old books. I look forward to a interesting read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sherrill and I are in a tiny, uni-directional book club.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,41],"tags":[78],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-based-on-a-true-story","category-story-telling","tag-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}