Feeling bereft having finished a book
There should be a word for it – something lyrical, and probably Gaelic or ancient Greek. Only such languages could withstand the complexity involved, because the emptiness a reader encounters having completed a loved book is not one of profound sadness alone. That book has given joy that will linger and spark blissful reminiscing. There is a sense of loss, but also knowledge that in recent days and weeks we have been enriched by its pages. Perhaps, too, the type of person who invests so much in reading finds this soft grief not altogether uncomfortable.
This doleful pleasure works to a routine. The wedge of paper in one’s right hand thins, from brick to chocolate bar to pamphlet. (What horror, incidentally, on those occasions when a fanned-flick forwards shows that what you thought were leafs of storyline are blanks or adverts for other titles; but what glee when the last page is not final, when an afterword jumps in front of the back door and greets you merrily. Endings within endings, physical twists changing book and feeling.)
Back in your hands page numbers climb, grains of sand trickling through an hourglass. The plot rises and bubbles, swirling towards satisfaction and resolution. You are simultaneously overtaken by involvement in the story (how on earth can this end well?) and creeping horror about real life (no other book can ever be as good as this one). The clock ticks towards THE END and you are lost, enraptured. Beneath the anguish, there exists a core of vindication that books still elicit this response in you, still make you feel as happy and sad, as black and white, as they did in childhood and adolescence. They remain a typeset whirlwind.
Soon, there is no more. Those characters you have spent time with – have shown patience towards, have shared moments tender, droll and wretched with, have thought (worried, even) about during your real life hours – are gone. Your guests have left the house.
While the book is being read, it is alive. Then it is slapped shut with a yearning sigh, and ruefully shelved. The first page giveth life, the last taketh it away. Now starts the search for something good enough to help us wallow in our bereavement all over again.