The hidden magic of re-reading (and why it’s good for your brain)

Recently my husband and I sold our big family home and moved to a much smaller apartment.
Of all the wrenching decisions that had to be made about what to keep and what to give away, sorting through my vast collection of books caused me the most anguish. When I moaned about the difficulty of the task to a friend, she gazed at me in blank amazement. “But haven’t you already read them all?” she asked. “What’s the point of keeping them?”

I stared back at her in even greater amazement. Apart from the obvious fact that a book is never just a book – it carries meaning and memories far beyond the words on the page – much of the pleasure of a book comes from returning to it. Each time we re-read, we discover new layers of meaning both about the book and ourselves.

Every Christmas I give myself the intense pleasure of curling up with a beloved childhood book. A few years ago I re-read all the Narnia books. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was the first novel I ever read on my own, and the first time I experienced narrative transportation. As a child, I stumbled with Lucy Pevensie through the wardrobe into the dark, snowy forest. I felt the icy touch of the wind on my face, I saw the golden light of the lamppost shining through the claws of shadows. As I re-read this scene for the first time in decades, the ghost of my child-self read with me, wide-eyed and rapt with wonder, changed forever by the realisation that black marks on a white page have the power to carry me away into other worlds.

Reading my battered childhood copy, I again felt that joyous loss of self in story, the willing suspension of disbelief. It did not matter that Father Christmas came bearing weapons in a story full of dryads, fauns and naiads. It only mattered that I wanted a magical bow and arrows, and a horn that would summon help for me if I was in danger. Two-and-a-half hours later I read the final lines filled with a glow of contentment: “And that is the very end of the adventure of the wardrobe. But if the Professor was right, it was only the beginning of the adventures of Narnia.”

What a lovely way to spend Christmas Eve!

The books I choose to re-read each year don’t just bring me comfort and joy, they make me think more deeply. While writing The Wild Girl, which imagines the life of Dortchen Wild, the oral source of many of the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, I re-read all of Jane Austen’s works in chronological order. She was a contemporary of theirs, and it helped me understand the inner life of a young woman in the early 1800s.

It also meant I read her work more closely than ever before. One of the great benefits of re-reading is that it lessens the cognitive load on our brain. Because we already know the plot and characters, our prefrontal cortex (the part of our brain responsible for problem-solving and critical thinking) can focus on hidden layers of meaning. And so I discovered “the muffled scream”, in the words of literary critic Tony Tanner, at the heart of Austen’s novels.

Last year I re-read many books set in Scotland, the location for my most recent book The Changeling. They included Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf and The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. Everywhere I went on my research trip, the wild Scottish landscape was transfigured by the words I had pored over so often I knew them by heart. “Walking thus, hour after hour, the senses keyed, one walks the flesh transparent,” Shepherd wrote, and I understood her words in the marrow of my bones.

The most interesting example is my experience of re-reading Wuthering Heights. I first read it when I was 12, inspired by Kate Bush’s “wily, windy moors”. I loved the gothic elements of it, the ghost of the little girl beating at the window, the ominous house with its strange mysteries, and the intense death-defying love between Catherine and Heathcliff.

A decade later, I studied it at university. By then I was a flag-waving feminist and wrote an essay excoriating the patriarchal structures of 19th-century society that kept women imprisoned within rigid societal expectations.

At 32, I thought it would be interesting to read it again. By then I was a new mother, overflowing with oxytocin. I was heartbroken at Catherine’s death. The idea of her never seeing her child grow up, and her little daughter growing up without a mother, seemed unbearably tragic to me. I wept as I read, my tears plopping on my baby’s downy head.

Ten years later, I was writing the early draft of my novel Bitter Greens, a reimagining of Rapunzel and the witch’s story braided with the true story of the woman who wrote the tale. This meant three separate narrative threads, three different points of view, three time periods. I could not see how to structure the story so I did not lose narrative tension. Then I read Wuthering Heights for the fourth time, not because I was searching for inspiration but because it had by now become a tradition. In Emily Bronte’s unconventional “nest” narrative, three stories nestled one inside another like a set of Russian dolls, I found the structure I had been searching for.

Fast-forward another 10 years. My children are adults now, and beginning to make their own way in the world. I fear for them and hope I have taught them all they need to know. Reading the book for the fifth time, I realise that it is the redemptive love of the younger generation that is Bronte’s true story. Unlike the destructive, obsessive passion of Catherine and Heathcliff, the romance between young Cathy and Hareton offers the chance of true healing, and the breaking of the cycle of intergenerational trauma.

Each time I re-read Wuthering Heights I encounter a different book, for I am not the same person. I am curious to know what my next reading will reveal to me about myself, and glad I am ensuring I’ll have many more to come. Because re-reading is not just a source of pleasure. When we re-read a known text, we deepen the neural pathways of our brains, strengthening neural connections and aiding long-term memory retention. Re-reading is a form of deep processing which can help delay cognitive decline, and for that reason alone it is worth digging out an old favourite.

As C.S. Lewis said: “I can’t imagine [anyone] really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”

The Changeling by Kate Forsyth is published by Penguin ($35)

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