Problems

• Early Disorder by Rebecca Josephs
  Farrar, Straus/Faber, 186 pp, £5.50, September 1981, ISBN 0 571 12031 8
• A Star for the Latecomer by Bonnie Zindel
  Bodley Head, 186 pp, £3.95, March 1981, ISBN 0 370 30319 9
• Catherine loves by Timothy Ireland
  Bodley Head, 117 pp, £3.95, June 1981, ISBN 0 370 30292 3
• Jacob have I loved by Katherine Paterson
  Gollancz, 216 pp, £4.95, April 1981, ISBN 0 575 02961 7

How many books have I read? Two hundred, three hundred, five hundred …? I could compile a list. But what would it tell me? What I know? What I have forgotten? What I was? What I wanted to be? What my mother and father wanted and expected and expect me to be? Millions of Cats, Goodnight Moon, Caps for Sale, Where the wild things are, The Blue Fairy Book, The Red Fairy Book, The Wind in the Willows, The Jungle Book, Stuart Little, The Secret Garden, The Borrowers, The Little Prince, Member of the Wedding, Gigi, Lord of the Flies, Return of the Native …