Revisiting Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

For Christmas last year, my parents got me a hardcover special edition copy of Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. Earlier that year, the glue holding the cover of my paperback edition finally gave out, and the two pieces came apart. That copy has been broken, and ripped, tea-stained, dog eared, highlighted, underlined, written on and cried on. It’s my favourite thing in the world.

I think I first read Fangirl when I was 15 or 16 years old. I can remember buying it and holding it in my hands for the first time. There was a Waterstones across from the Starbucks in the shopping centre near to where I live. I always go and buy a book while my parents grab a coffee. Now I had to incorporate two shops into that same space of time, because the Urban Outfitters is next door. I always saw that as a pretty good summation of my personality, Urban and Waterstones being next to each other. But anyway, I’m getting away from the point.  I’ll be honest, I am assuming my age here. I could have been any age really when I bought that particular book. There’s a high chance I was younger. But 16 sounds good. It’s an important age. I was two years younger than Cath. Still had two whole years before I got to where she was.

That was four years ago now.

The way I read Fangirl has changed. It isn’t a perfect book by any means and I no longer see it that way. For better or for worse, I now imagine Timothée Chalamet as Nick (but no, I don’t actually want a movie of this book) and not everything Levi does is completely romantic. But the biggest change is that I’m not imagining my future when I read it. I’m looking back on it. Looking back on a future that never came to pass. Reading Fangirl is now a way for me to time-travel. There are physical memories attached to that paperback copy, so, as I read from my second-hand hardcover, I was actually careful to try and keep it pristine. Or at least as pristine as you can keep something that’s second-hand.

But the paperback copy has tear stains from when I read it at two-am when I couldn’t sleep in my new university flat. It was the only book I brought with me when I moved half way across the country. It was the only one I thought I needed. (I was half right, three weeks later I asked my parents to bring Carry On with them when they came up to see me). Every single page is dog-eared from where I’ve read it and re-read so many times. It has annotations from when I was 16 and when I was 19, and I can’t tell them apart, so it’s just this jumbled mess of me. A part of the reason why I’m an English Literature student is because of this book. So I could take creative writing classes and get taught by someone like Professor Piper (I took the classes, but so far haven’t been graced by anyone nearly as good as her).

Cath talks about writing love-stories the same way I talk about writing love-stories. I’ve watched the same tv show in five different languages because I adore the story, and it solidifies the idea of soul-mates in my head. And then, last year, after finally watching the (in)famous Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, I ventured into the world of fanfiction. I captured Scorpius Malfoy just like Cath captured Baz and ‘raised him as [my] own’ (thanks, Wren). I wasn’t as dedicated, nor did I have the crazy success that Cath had with her fics, but it did get me writing. I was writing a thousand, two thousand words every day for about 2 months. I passed time at work thinking up plots, I wrote on the train back to university. I was convinced and terrified that my first seminar for creative writing would involve sharing something you’d written recently, and the only thing I had to share was fanfiction.

That’s one thing I do admire about Cath. Her ability talk about ‘fandom’ -- even if she does cringe after using that word. I can never talk about it, I seize up. She wears Simon Snow shirts onto campus, explains exactly to Levi and Reagan what she does. I could never. Fangirl is this perfect little ecosystem, where you can talk about writing fic and fandom openly, and without fear. It’s my perfect world, and not the one that I live in.

Of course, that’s not what we had to do. And my fanfiction adventure remains an online one. I think I was a little bit disappointed though. People had read, and enjoyed, my fics. I could finally call myself a writer and believe myself when I did.

I re-read Fangirl in less than 12 hours. There are not many books I can do that with anymore. Maybe a new release by an author I’m forever indebted to (*cough* Rick Riordan *cough*). I wasn’t expecting to read it that quickly. It was going to be my before-bed read. I just kept sneaking back up to my bedroom to read a little bit more. I knew what was coming next and I wanted to get to it. Above anything else, I just adore the love-story between Cath and Levi. I love watching it unfold. My favourite parts used to be the Simon Snow snippets, but now we’ve got Carry on and Wayward Son I find myself appreciating the actual story so much more.

Fangirl was my favourite book when I was 16 because I hoped I would be Cath when I grew up. And I was. I was myself, too. Over the years I’ve done all the things that Cath has done. So when I read Fangirl now, I’m not just reading her story. I’m revisiting mine, too.