“Civilization, the orderly world in which we live, is frail. We are skating on thin ice.” – Zygmunt Bauman.
For the last several years, when people have asked me what I study, I have told them that I study the end of the world.
As you can imagine, it’s the sort of answer that results in rather mixed responses. When this first became my stock answer, quite a few years ago, it was generally met with either polite laughter, a barely concealed rolling of the eyes, or a swift change of the subject. Unfortunately, in recent years, when I’ve told people that I study the end of the world the responses have shifted away from polite derision and towards people quietly asking “how long do you think we have left?” If I had to pinpoint the exact moment that this shift began to take place I’d have to point to…
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Reading Emily of New Moon I began to have an idea of why I’ve never loved and spent time with Emily Byrd Starr as I have with Anne Shirley or Pat Gardiner. I began to suss it out then, but I loved the book and it still seemed strange to me. With Emily Climbs it began to seem clearer – that dark streak running through it, I said, and left it at that. But it is only on finishing Emily’s Quest that I fully understand – and that is partly because I know, on closing this book, I will be leaving it closed for possibly another twenty years. Whether I have the moral courage to read it then will be interesting to see – almost like Emily’s fortitude in reading her letter from her fourteen-year-old self to herself at twenty-four, except unlike the very young Emily I know the pain…
