I recently read a novel called The Inheritors, by William Golding. It was slow, it was painful, and before I was even done it had become one of my favorite books.

For whatever reason, there is a difference between experiencing something and being told it. Even if everything you're told is accurate and salient, and you have all the essential models, the person that comes out the other end of an experience is different from the one who only learns about it. One of the invaluable functions of the modern novel is that it can get you part way there. Reading a story also is not the same as living the experience, but it manages a similar modality.

The Inheritors told me nothing knew. It's speculative fiction at best. But it did give me the sense of having lost, not just a family, but a whole people.

When readers [...]

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