Alone with a Book

by Stephanie Shi

First published in Spellbinder (Winter 2023 Issue) on 1 January 2023. Click the arrow (>) to learn more about this piece

Six years have passed since you last read a physical book. You wouldn’t have grabbed one if you hadn’t grown sick of four black bezels enclosing much of what you looked at. When you began working freelance in 2016, you felt you could sit before your laptop and clack away every day for the rest of your life. You had full control of your schedule, loved the silence of your bedroom as you wrote or edited articles. You slept eight hours a night despite spending your breaks glued to your phone.

This is what a lockdown does: Everything feels claustrophobic. So you need a break, even from a tried-and-tested routine. A change of scenery. Maybe a semblance of company.

*

Since the community quarantine started, bookstagrams have been filling my feed. Today, another college friend has launched hers, and I see how, like those before her, she is reconnecting with old friends. ‘I’m so happy you’re here! Welcome to bookstagram!’ and author recommendations flood the comments section. Some people respond with their own reviews.

The interactions take me back to my college days, when I got to deliberate submissions for the university’s literary journal. Our editors encouraged the staff to speak their minds. But that took some getting used to. At my first deliberation, I, along with the other new members, didn’t defend a poem we liked; we were scared to oppose a senior member who was lambasting the poem’s every image. For what felt like an hour, most of us clutched our seats and stared helplessly at each other.

When one of my editors found out how the session went, she confronted all the senior members. She reminded them how important it was to get everyone’s input and to be mindful of the environment they were creating. A week later, we re-evaluated the poem. Sharing our opinions happened tentatively at first, but as more of us spoke, we grew more confident.

Although I enjoyed sharing my analyses, I loved moments when a fellow staffer called our attention to something else about the work. Following their thought process unlocked something in my mind. That was the case when we were reviewing a poem about stargazing, which was also a love poem. At first, we didn’t think it was worth publishing; we’ve seen several poems about stars, and this one didn’t seem special; it seemed cliché. But someone sensed that the last line carried some other meaning, that it seemed to play with perspective. We tarried in the poem a bit more to see what she’d meant, and slowly, one staffer after another shared their take. We began to understand how the last line subverted expectations, how the poet earned the ending. The majority of us embraced the new interpretation and the insights the piece suggested. We published the poem.

These memories tempt me to create a bookstagram too.

But my fear of being judged, as well as my hunger for human connections, could realize my other fear: saying what I think will win approval and engagement, never mind if I believe it or not. I would lose myself.

*

Natsuo Kirino’s Out follows four women who work the graveyard shift in a bento factory. Initially, two things bond them: they’re some of the most efficient bodies in the assembly line, and the job market has cast them out due to their age and gender. It’s a loose bond; Penguin’s website calls it a ‘friendship of sorts.’ The women don’t know one another’s histories, and they only have a vague idea of each other’s domestic lives and financial woes.

This level of distance makes sense. Most of them spend the day looking after everyone in their families—spouses, children, in-laws—and sneaking in some sleep. At the factory, they only speak to each other right before their shift starts (no one commutes earlier than they have to), and the conversations are brief, even hushed. Their dynamics are a far cry from the female friendships you see on-screen today, which are often depicted to be cheerful and sweet. You like that. In some ways, Out presents a simpler, if not also dispassionate, arrangement. No one demands and expects comfort from the other, because no one dreams of the friendship-of-sorts to last forever. No one behaves like the relationship is of import.

*

Out was really good. You can borrow it

M then offers to hand his copy to R, my boyfriend, to give to me. My fingers remain still on the keyboard, but my mind protests. I didn’t ask for this. We were just making small talk, answering questions about a common friend. And I don’t see myself keeping this sort of commitment, of crossing out someone else’s list of unsolicited recommendations. How to say no without hurting his feelings? How to say no without sounding like a jerk, or worse, a patronizing phony?

Without an escape, I seem to have no choice but to read Out. I’m sure it’s a chance for M and me to become more than acquaintances—more than R’s friend and R’s girlfriend to each other. Thankfully, I don’t have to like the book; based on what I’ve gathered from R’s stories, M just wants people to be honest. So I simply have to give the book a chance and return it.

How’d you come across Out?

​

I’m still deflecting. Can I really commit to a book that’s not on my TBR list, and one I only heard of seconds ago? A quick Google search informs me that the Japanese novel was published in 1997, the English translation in 2004. Natsuo Kirino is considered the ‘queen of Japanese crime.’

I used to have a girlfriend who read a lot, M shares.

He continues: She liked going to the bookstore. So when we were there I checked out the only genre that interested me besides comic books

I remember her, them. In high school, I thought they made a great pair since they both made jokes, laughed at each other’s jokes, and were open about sex. They were the first to hit the dance floor at parties, where they gyrated against each other with such theatrics that our circle laughed until we stopped feeling awkward in our prudishness.

Maybe we could be friends. Given our different personalities, I’m just not sure how.

*

The crisp, rough paper seems to shed motes of pulp when you brush your fingers against it. Although you don’t see any particles, you feel them cling to your skin, tickling your fingertips.

M’s copy of Out is at least 10 years old. Despite being neatly plastic-wrapped, it shows signs of age. The inside covers have browned, save for the sections underneath the plastic and the scotch tape, which are still white. The pages, dusky cream in the center, gradually darken to a caramel hue toward the edges.

Every now and then, a page flip cuts the air and alerts your cat. He reaches over to your side of the desk, and together you inhale a sweet woodsy scent. Although you never really paid attention to the smell of books before, you’re now calmed and entranced by it. You relish it just about anywhere you read at home.

And you love that you get to pick up the book whenever you feel like reading—that it’s always there for you.

*

A few weeks ago, I told my brother what I wanted in a friend. He said that it seems I’m looking for someone just like me. I sighed. ‘Yes.’

Then I wondered if what I really needed was to be okay with, or a friend to, myself. And what that meant.

*

In Out, the women help someone in their group avoid being convicted of murder. One does it because she can’t pay her loan back to the woman seeking help; the other, because she’ll be rewarded. Their relationship is transactional, the terms clear.

Maybe you and your former best friend needed that clarity. Maybe, if both of you had expressed care in the way the other grasped it—accepted your differences—you’d still be friends, at the very least. Maybe she could’ve DMed whatever she wanted to say to you, could’ve made time to hang out or chat. Similarly, maybe you could have interacted with her photos more, or fended off her Twitter bullies.

But you couldn’t have realized all this then. Social media was new. Everyone judged each other for how they behaved and what they shared online. No one had conversations about friendship or social media habits and anxieties.

*

Right after I mention Natsume Soseki’s novel Sanshiro, M sends me a photo of his “sad book collection.” I don’t know why he’d do such a thing; I could judge him based on the titles he has or the appearance of his shelf. It’s comforting, though, that he seems to trust that I won’t be snooty toward him.

I’ve only read 4 of those books

​

Lemme guess, Fight Club? Hahaha

My enthusiasm, how quickly I keep the chat going, surprises me. I dislike guessing games, but somehow, this feels different.

I open the shelfie in a new tab to get a better look. Most of M’s books are thick and therefore stand upright. A figurine of an anime-looking Harley Quinn supports one end of the line, while a hefty copy of The Complete Illustrated Works of Edgar Allan Poe towers on the opposite end. M has a few Chuck Palahniuks, but I’m pretty sure Fight Club is the Palahniuk he’s read.

Some are books I wanted to save up for years ago. Seeing their spines again, as I did when I frequented bookstores, is a jaunt across time, to my old selves and the people who were there for me: Ian McEwan’s Atonement, when I was in my preteens and felt partially responsible for the breakup between my brother and his first girlfriend; Palahniuk’s Choke, when I wanted to be like my edgy high school classmates who read books our teachers found inappropriate for young women; and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, which I put on my book list after I finished Never Let Me Go, a book my best friend lent me in the summer break of 2012. Who would’ve thought that in two years, from calling each other sisters, we’d talk less, the disconnect evident in the exponential time skips in our chat thread, then give up; the silence between us harbors resentment, disappointment, what-ifs—things we should’ve felt safe to tell each other.

The thinner books are stacked. Under M’s gleaming royal blue copy of The Little Prince is a cream-colored spine with brown lines, solid and broken, creeping all over it like vines.

I know that book. I have that book.

WTH, why do you have ELSEWHERE HELD AND LINGERED hahaha (love that book)

Hahahahahaha What?? I enjoy poetry

I don’t know if M is joking. His good-humored reply invites me to ask, to know more.

But what does it matter to me if M enjoys poetry or not? I’m relishing the photo, the chat, the laughter.

*

You read lines from Out aloud as you try to feel the voices of the different characters. How would the cut-throat, matter-of-fact protagonist, Masako Katori, sound at her breaking point? Would she talk fast, would the pitch of her voice lower to a growl, or soften to a kind of hiss? ‘Your big mouth’s going to send us all to hell. But you’ve dug your own grave, too, you fool!’ she spat.

You read aloud to embody the keenness of Natsuo Kirino’s narrator. ‘Kuniko realized for the first time that she’d made a serious mistake. But as usual she couldn’t blame herself for long.’ You imitate the strikingly clear enunciation of one of your favorite poets, Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta. ‘If things got too rough here at the factory, she would just have to find another job. It was a shame, just when she’d met that nice guard…’

As you read on, your arrow bookmark edges down the page, asserting where you’re reading, playing, living—Here.

---

Stephanie Shi is a Chinese Filipino writer who explores her relationship with herself, her family, and art through essays. Her works have appeared in Spellbinder, The Lumiere Review, Anak Sastra, The Ekphrastic Review, After the Art, and 11 x 9: Collaborative Poetry from the Philippines and Singapore, among others. She enjoys nurturing communities, film photography, and watching cat reels. She lived in the Philippines for 30 years and is currently based in Switzerland. Twitter: @stephwritescnf Website: stephanieshi.journoportfolio.com

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