Just like a cat, a child, left to her own devices, colonises a limited territory and creates an individual map of her neighbourhood. On it are personal landmarks: shops, playgrounds, the houses of friends or enemies. Patricia Craig, a girl who always had her nose stuck in a book, inhabited a special if not unique version of her native city: hers was the Belfast of the book – not the Bible, but the good books for children.
This territory was extensive. At the height of her career as a bookworm her street-map charted pedestrian and bus routes over half of Belfast. She thought nothing of walking two or three miles in search of, say, an unread Noel Streatfield or Enid Blyton. She started off using “the dearly beloved, well-appointed Carnegie Library on the Donegall Road”, moved on to the Falls Road library, and then risked “the dodgy unfamiliarity of the Protestant Shankill”.
Eventually, as a slightly older child, she was undertaking an hour’s bus journey to the Ligoniel: “You alighted from the red city bus just opposite the library on a hilly street, and shot across the road with your assortment of books, eager to exchange them for other vivid titles and once again disarm ennui.”
In this joyous and extremely enjoyable book, Patricia Craig describes in her characteristically rich and limber prose the libraries and bookshops which were such a crucial part of her childhood, their colourful settings on various Belfast streets, and the people she encountered in them or might have encountered – such as Ciaran Carson, another young library user, who headed into the enemy territory of the Shankill in quest of Biggles books, having exhausted the Falls Road’s resources.
She tells us much about the history of libraries and readers. And of course she describes the books, what she read and loved, or hated: "No one in their right mind could possibly enjoy [LT Meade's] books for girls"; "As for Little Women, the title alone was enough to depress the spirits." (You won't always agree with her opinions.)
Phenomenal memory
Hundreds of books are referred to, discussed briefly, sometimes assessed. She liked Richmal Compton and, more surprisingly, Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl. (That was one of my favourites too, but most writers prefer The Little Mermaid.) She likes Enid Blyton and Nancy Drew, but not the Chalet School books. She seems to have read every book for children available in libraries between the 1950s and late 1960s, and to remember all of them – where she found them, where she read them, how she responded to them at the time.
This is a memoir of a childhood spent reading – and walking, catching buses, talking, eventually trying to flirt with other readers – in the context of a Belfast which is portrayed as considerably more friendly and “normal” than its reputation.
At the same time, Craig does not downplay the flaws of the city she clearly adores: “Like every Belfast child above the age of reason, I was well-schooled in the principles of sectarian expediency . . . Within a stone’s throw of Sandy Row I’d have had a Papist despicability to answer for.”
The book has a roughly chronological structure, but has a relaxed, rather rambling feel to it. An index might have been a useful if pedantic addition, since the pages are packed with information and many of Craig’s insights, in particular on lesser-known writers will be useful to scholars engaged in research on children’s literature. But essentially this is a liberating, laughing celebration of the stories and libraries of the land of youth – an unburdened and optimistic book, as charming and interesting as a genuinely curious child in quest of new worlds to read about. And it gives us a welcome new perspective on Belfast as the city of the library.
Éilís Ní Dhuibhne's latest book is Aisling, nó Iníon A
