From John Keats to John Green: Why I love Y/A fiction
Reflecting on her reading habits and growing HECS debt.
Art by Ellie Stephenson.
When I was 10, my dad read me Frances Hodgson Burnett’s
The Secret Garden. As he was reading, I held Burnett’s world in the palm of my hand and saw every part of the garden in its technicolour beauty. I’ve always felt like I carried the garden around with me, like one day I would form a world of my own and finally leap from its pages.
Like many searching for a place to conquer their literary desires, I chose to study English at university. Whilst this choice was perhaps an unwise collaboration of naivety and budding intrigue, I was glad to be doing something I was actually interested in. The first novel I distinctly remember reading was Homer’s