Friendship, Reading & WhatsApp

This blog post is dedicated to wonderful friend & reader Réne Petersen

Back in 2019, I wrote on this blog about a good friend who had just finished reading me a book in chapter instalments on WhatsApp. Fast forward five years, and this lovely friend is still reading to me.

Why? Well, I’ll get to that in a minute.

First of all, as we’re on our tenth book – which deserves a bit of an acknowledgement and celebration – here are the books that she’s read me over the years, in no particular order:

And this is what we are reading now. Well, I say ‘we’ but it’s Réne who’s doing all the work.

Let me go back a bit. Réne is originally from Cape Town but we met when we were both living in Nairobi – she was my eldest child’s class teacher and it wasn’t until towards the end of our time there that a firm friendship was formed between us. If I’m being very frank, we got extremely drunk together one night and that was that really. We laughed and laughed and laughed and have been good friends ever since. We did, of course, also bond over our shared love (read: obsession) with books.

But then Réne left Nairobi, and we did too and we were ended up in lands far from one another. She now lives in Guatemala where she still teaches, a country that is close to my heart as this is where I met my husband. It has been far, far too long since we’ve seen one another. It actually breaks my heart a little. But we’ve managed to stay in touch and it is truly the biggest treat and gift to open WhatsApp and see a message notifying me of a voice recording from her. I love listening to that tell-tale clink of ice (she sometimes drinks beer with ice when she’s reading to me) and the way she can dissolve into a fit of laughter when she reads an amusing passage. I love listening to her beautiful lilting South African accent and the occasional stumbling over a phrase when she says No. Wait. Let me read that again.

Sometimes there is a long break between books and sometimes Réne goes straight on to the next one. She normally sends me a few possibilities and I tend to choose one which doesn’t have too many characters or timelines or plot-lines as I can find this hard to follow on audio. (The Night Circus, for example, I loved, but I need to go back and re-read it myself, which I will.) But this lovely tradition has stood the test of time. As you can see from the images, we really like Fredrik Backman. If you haven’t already discovered the delights of this Swedish author, do check him out. I actually think that A Man Called Ove, the very first novel Réne read me, remains my favourite. Or perhaps it’s because it was the first book, so felt really special.

So, why did Réne start reading to me? I really struggle with sleep. Chronic, sustained sleep deprivation is brutal. I don’t really have the words for it. Ok, I wrote an entire book about it, so there are some words there. But Réne knew how hard it was for me and she asked me, how can I be there for you? (This is the best question. It says: I don’t have a solution, but I want to be a good friend.) And she came up with this suggestion of reading to me. She’d never done it before, and I’d never even listened to an audio book at that stage. But it worked, as in: for Réne it proved a relaxing activity after a full day of teaching and for me, it proved really comforting to be read to.

It was also Réne who let me know during her recent visit to Nairobi that the library I started up from its humble beginnings in a shoe cupboard at the kids’ school (when I used to cart back extra suitcases of books bought from charity shops each summer) has gone from strength to strength and is now a thriving part of the school community. How that made my heart sing. And that she thought to let me know as well because she knew how much that would mean to me.

The school library around 2015, with my son on the left

The school library in 2024, in its own dedicated cabin

And here we are, ten books on and whole worlds of stories between us. We have travelled from suburban Stockholm to the wilderness of Botswana; from Lago Atitlán in Guatemala and into the magical world of Le Cirque de Reves. Réne reading to me has taught me so many things. For example, it has taught me how to ask that question, how can I be there for you? It has helped me to be kind to myself, giving myself permission to just stop and curl up on the sofa and close my eyes and let her words paint pictures. I mean, we all loved being read to when we were children, right? Just because we grow up, doesn’t mean we love it any less, we just don’t often have this opportunity. So how lucky am I to have someone read to me in this way?

So, Réne, muchísimas gracias from the bottom of my bookish heart for your time, for your care, for your love of the power of story. And for your very special friendship.

Thank you for reading this blog post. Compliment it with my first blog post from 2019 writing about Réne reading to me or my favourite five reads from 2023.