“I believe in the joy of reading and having lots of books around you that you want to read, have read and may never read.”  Marilyn Rolapp Brinton

I’m not sure how many followers we have here at two at twenty-seven. Those are details Rae tracks. (She has a lovely eye for detail.) I do know that we lost one of our favorite readers this month. Marilyn Brinton, my sister’s mother-in-law and my dear friend and fellow book lover, passed away. Maybe she’s paid a quick visit to The Midnight Library? Although she wouldn’t need to try on other lives since she knew, better than most, how to live wholly—a life brimming with laugher and love and of course, plenty of good reads. She and I exchanged the best books. I was so excited to give her The Marriage Portrait for Christmas. I’m sure Maggie O’Farrell grabbed Marilyn’s heart like she did mine. When I heard the news of her passing, I cried. The world felt instantly more dim. What an irresistible light. I couldn’t help but think of Shakespeare’s advice, “And when [she] shall die, take [her] and cut [her] out in little stars, and [she] will make the face of heaven so fine, that all the world will be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun.”

I’m mourning the fact that I can no longer share glittering pages with Marilyn. I’d definitely give her my latest, Demon Copperhead. She was a fan of the classics. I wish we could discuss Kingsolver’s undeniable genius in her close retelling of David Copperfield here. I know we’d agree, “It’s hard to think of another living novelist who could take a stab at Dickens and rise above the level of catastrophe.” Named one of the “10 Best Books of 2022” by The Post and The Times, it’s not for everyone. It’s a rough-and-tumble read. The central character, Damon Fields, is born to a teenage girl who prepares for motherhood with amphetamines and Vicodan. Oh, and gin, don’t hold the gin. Damon, nicknamed Demon, is a lot like a meteoroid—when he enters rural south Virginia’s atmosphere at a high speed, his childhood burns up quickly, and he hits the ground hard, not running. Because Marilyn believed in the importance of staying curious, she would look beyond profuse swearing because she knows that profanity isn’t simply a sign of language poverty or lack of intelligence. Surely, she would find deep relevance in the book’s underlying issues that are in need of a monster-sized vehicle for social change: big pharma and the opioid crisis, poverty and rural dispossession, along with the ineffectiveness of child-welfare agencies and our sometimes backward public education system (especially in the backwoods). She would see the best in Demon. I know she would. If possible, she’d pull him into her magnetic orbit and, without preaching, tell him not to save his juice—use it up, Demon. Use it all up. Give it to each and all we meet. Freely. And beautifully.

P.S. If you’re a sensitive reader, check out this review to see if Demon Copperhead is right for you.

Posted by Tracy