There’s a certain kind of memoir that’s described as the “child saved by books”. The author faces various childhood traumas and discovers that reading offers escape, or redemption, or the keys to a future passion and vocation.

I found this useful little label in a Times Literary Supplement review by Carolyne Larrington, in which she surveys three bookish memoirs by academics (Mad about Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate; Fierce Appetites by Elizabeth Boyle; and Love and the Novel by Christina Lupton).

But Larrington’s example of a “child saved by books” book is another memoir, Undercurrent, in which Natasha Carthew recalls a life of dire poverty in rural Cornwall. She found solace in the landscape and the mobile library.

The more I look into it, however, the more the concept of the “child saved by books” memoir doesn’t seem quite accurate, at least among Australian writers. Shannon Burns certainly needed a lot of saving. His memoir Childhood vividly depicts a long nightmare of bouncing from one dysfunctional family to another. In his teens, he discovers literature. Does it offer salvation?

In a backhanded way, perhaps. Because young Burns is drawn to pessimistic writers. The ancient Greeks show him he is part of the larger story of human trials. He gets into Hardy’s Jude the Obscure and the Russians. He tells himself “I will never have a connection to my father, but I will always be able to read Dostoevsky and Tolstoy”. Is it enough? “You can live partly on books and the morbid recognitions they provide, but you can’t thrive.”

The consolation of books is sought in a less dramatic way during the pandemic lockdowns. Carmel Bird’s memoir Telltale is a beguiling and lyrical meander through the books in her home library, from her 1946 copy of Stories from Uncle Remus, the first book she ever read by herself, to Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Bridges and peacocks are recurring themes in a woven magic carpet of memory, description and observation. This is not just merry nostalgia: as a child, her books often scared her.

For Bird, books are formative. “People sometimes talk about the lens through which a writer views the world that is being offered to a reader – in this case my principle lens is formed from the books I have read.” Often I had no idea where Telltale was taking me, but I was very happy to go along for the ride.

Another rereading project turned into a memoir is Ruth Wilson’s The Jane Austen Remedy, astonishingly the first book from an 89-year-old. It begins at a difficult moment in her life: she is having recurring dreams about losing her voice and decides to retreat from her husband and live alone.