Finishing a book, putting it down, and thinking about it
Evening has drawn in on the book. The last lines ebb away, and then there is nothing. You look beyond The End, shifting through the plumage of any remaining pages. Endorsements for further works by this newly cherished author offer comfort, and an Acknowledgements page is clocked and will later make for an encore.
Now you dip backwards, rewinding time with a finger placed into the roulette wheels of its pages so you can pause, read a line and remember, or be reminded. With its front cover once again mulled over, the book is clapped closed and placed ceremonially on a nearby surface to lie in state. Should you be in bed, there is little chance of sleep visiting soon. Completing a book summons all-consuming thoughts of the tale now ended. They lodge in your mind like a prolonged and pealing echo.
After a while broad reflections thin to particulars. Wasn’t that flawed, leading man likeable? Didn’t that hospital scene strike you hard and draw tears from your eyes? The narrator’s way of talking to you lingers, its prose-style, rhythms and beats still tangible. Perhaps you may even wonder what happened next to its characters.
The book’s narrative overlaps with your own. There is a routine sense of emptiness and loss to flounder in during this brief gap between reads. Lurking is the danger that reality will poke through.
It won’t. There is always another book to escape in.