The Reader by Traci Chee is a fun fantasy tale set in a time when reading is a long forgotten skill surrounded by magic and mystery.
The plot is rife with the importance of literacy and forces us to look at life without literature and without stories having been accessibly recorded or immortalized.
This book reminds us that there is a magic in stories, the ones we live, the ones we make up, both. The author reminds us that the preservation of these stories has always been important and in a way is its own kind of magic.
The saying ‘Art imitates life’ comes to mind when I think of this story. The main character becomes absolutely smitten with the notion of reading as she learns it. In her absence of the skill as a reader we can also feel her pain and helplessness of living in a world without a tangible sense of direction, the reliability and tested means of understood information books provide us. Something, I think we all take for granted.
Consider it, without books, both fiction and none fiction whose story do you trust?
I did expect it to remind me of the importance, the value and power of words, books, stories and there the author didn’t fail me.
