Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction
- Chapter Two Intimate Reading: A Narrative Method
- Chapter Three Veronica's Bruise
- Chapter Four Nina's Life-Long Friend Flicka
- Chapter Five Esther's Episode
- Chapter Six Jane's Visionary Reading
- Chapter Seven Sue's Buried Life
- Chapter Eight Reading by Heart: Lexithymia and Transformative Affective Patterns
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter Four - Nina's Life-Long Friend Flicka
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction
- Chapter Two Intimate Reading: A Narrative Method
- Chapter Three Veronica's Bruise
- Chapter Four Nina's Life-Long Friend Flicka
- Chapter Five Esther's Episode
- Chapter Six Jane's Visionary Reading
- Chapter Seven Sue's Buried Life
- Chapter Eight Reading by Heart: Lexithymia and Transformative Affective Patterns
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
An acquaintance put me in contact with Nina. My Friend Flicka had meant so much to her, and she was willing to meet me and tell me about it. I had never heard of the book beforehand, and was surprised I enjoyed it so much. I imagined that she must have read it as a young girl, and that the memory had stayed with her ever since. Our meeting took place in my office one afternoon in February. I made us tea, and we sat down in comfy chairs. We talked for a long time.
Thor: Could you please tell me all about your relationship with My Friend Flicka.
Nina: It's a bit difficult. I don't quite know how old I was when I first read it, but I was a young child. Let me have a look at the book – it says it was printed in 1973. It may be that one of my brothers had it first. So I don't know when it came into my hands, but it's like it's always been there. My mother loved reading out loud, she had taken lessons, but I preferred reading on my own. I am born in 1967, so I must have been seven or eight. Perhaps my mother read it to me the first time. But I clearly remember reading it when I was nine, ten, eleven, twelve. I can't recall what it was like arriving at a particular chapter, for instance – the feeling of ‘oh, what's going to happen now?’ I have a general memory of the world of the book, a world of horses, which was my dreamworld. Where I grew up, only the rich people had horses, so that was beyond even thinking about as something that would come true. My cousin and I would play at having a ranch full of horses. It's not that I really wanted to live on a ranch in Wyoming, it was just a different world to dream about. But now that I live in the countryside, I can remember all the little descriptions of scenery and animals which at the time would merely serve to colour my reading experience; they now happen before me all the time, making me think sometimes that ‘Oh, I live in Flickaland.’
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- Chapter
- Information
- Literature and TransformationA Narrative Study of Life-Changing Reading Experiences, pp. 67 - 100Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2020