Reading in the gaps: Why we return to books that broke us

There are books we finish and put down, and for a while, we are unable to speak. These are books that pull the air from our lungs. That leave us raw, like skin rubbed thin. And yet, somehow, we return to them.

Not immediately, of course. Often, we need time. Months. Years. Distance to recover from the ache they left behind. But they are on our minds, and the pull is there. Like gravity drawing us back to earth.

What drives this return?

It isn’t comfort, not exactly. We don’t reread A Little Life or The Bell Jar or The Year of Magical Thinking for escape. We go back to find something else. A deeper understanding of ourselves, maybe. A desire to confront the emotional contours we once slid across too fast. To meet the book again, not as the reader we were, but the one we’ve become.

These novels often serve as emotional litmus tests. What once shattered us might now feel distant, or worse, familiar. Sometimes we discover new devastation in lines we previously passed over. Other times, we find ourselves less undone, more able to bear witness without breaking. That, too, is a kind of growth.

There is also a strange kind of intimacy in rereading. You know what’s coming. The moments that wrecked you. The scenes you dread. And still, you go on. Not because you’ve forgotten the pain, but because something in you needs to revisit it. To see if it still cuts.

It’s not masochism. It’s memory work. Emotional archaeology. These books mark places in us we didn’t fully understand the first time. And in rereading, we become both the reader and the witness to who we were when we first encountered them.

There’s also something to be said for the act of rereading itself, especially in a culture obsessed with the next new thing. To pause and go back is almost a rebellion. It says: this still matters. This is worth sitting with again.

If you’ve been circling around a book that broke you, maybe it’s time. Not for closure, necessarily, but for clarity. Or even just to see what it feels like now.

Books worth returning to (when you’re ready):

This is obviously a personal list and it is going to be different for everyone, but these books are the ones that spring to mind when I think about this. Those ones I find myself picking up again and again. 

1. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara – For its brutal, beautiful portrayal of trauma and love that persists.

2. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath – A study in descent and clarity, whose edges change depending on your own.

3. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro – Quietly devastating and deceptively gentle, it reveals more with each read.

4. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin – A heart-wrenching exploration of identity, desire, and regret.

5. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong – Lyrical and brutal, a letter that reopens emotional wounds with grace.

6. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion – For its measured reflection on grief and memory.

7. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng – A quiet tragedy that resonates even more on a second pass.

8. The Road by Cormac McCarthy – Sparse and relentless, its emotional power only deepens with time.

Sometimes, the books that ruin us are the ones that shape us most. And in going back, we don’t just re-read them. We re-meet ourselves.