Entranced

Thursday 10th March

Day 323

Today I leave some things undone. I lie under the bed covers with a book, the pussy cat an anchor on my tummy. When I laugh out loud he moves up and down with my muscle waves but sleeps on, ears twitching.

I am swept up and entranced in the other world of this book - the story of a teenage girl, one hot summer, 1976?, Manitoba, Canada, a Mennonite town, her mother and sister missing, her growing up, her waking up. When I look up and out of the window, I’m surprised to see blue sky and wonder how long the sun has been shining - on a spring afternoon in Devon, where I live in another century.

I’d like to be able to write like that, like a whirlwind - to weave a world on the page where you can lose yourself in another’s imagination. And then remember your own.

The book is called ‘A Complicated Kindness’ by Miriam Toews.