I am a reader, I love books and stories. When Mottsu wanted to read something lighter than his usual fare of news and politics has asked me to recommend a fiction book, one with emotions and feeling.

I had just finished reading The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy, I recommended it, almost, without hesitating. It’s a powerful book the central relationship between a boy and a wolf is very moving, Mc Carthy’s words a pleasure to read. He is a peerless author, if bleak.

I’m a little haunted by just how bleak some of his works are. What was I thinking? I had thought, I might have considered what a desolate story it told. I might have considered Mottsu’s state and considered something cheerier, actually that’s not true. I did consider Mottsu’s state and I thought the writing was so moving, so compelling, it would touch his heart like it had squeezed my own.

The Crossing is a melancholic yet redemptive read. I thought Mottsu would find it as uplifting as it is grim. Regret is inevitable from time to time, now I wish I had recommended a different book, a bright happy book, something less harrowing than McCarthy’s incomparable prose.

I can’t think of an author but Dr Suess who writes bright and happy, and Dr Suess would not have worked either.

“He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led to nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignantly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave. “ Cormac McCarthy (The Crossing)