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Books I Carried Into the Dark

Updated: Jun 6


Arrangement in Black: Girl Reading by James McNeill Whistler
Arrangement in Black: Girl Reading by James McNeill Whistler

A quiet reckoning of the stories I’ve carried

like spells, ghosts, warnings, and maps.



East of Eden – John Steinbeck


I came to this book at a time when my life felt unravelling, like I was trapped by the weight of family bloodlines and mistakes that felt inevitable. I believed my path was fixed—helpless against the tide of inherited sorrow. Then Steinbeck gave me timshel—“thou mayest.”


A quiet rebellion whispered through the pages:

choice is ours, even in the darkest stories.


It shifted something inside me. I realised I could be an author rather victim in my own story. That word became a talisman and I have it tattooed on my arm, a reminder inked deep, as permanent as the first edition I hold dear.


The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath


I was already living inside a fog of despair when I read this. Many might say it’s a dangerous companion for a troubled mind, but to me, it was a mirror. Plath gave a name to the shadow of depression that I’d carried in silence, the suffocating weight that made the world feel distant and unreal.


It didn’t pull me under—it held my hand quietly, showing me I was not alone in the silent pain.


Frankenstein – Mary Shelley


The film pulled me in first, with its haunting imagery and heartbreaking story, but the book… the book is something different. It speaks in a language of love and grief tangled so tightly you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. It is about creation, control, and the aching refusal to accept life’s harsh limits. There’s a desperate need to be both separate and belonging, alive yet mournful.


I’ve returned to it often, each time feeling its pulse beneath the skin of my own fears.


Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë


I found this book in my college years, consumed by a restless yearning I couldn’t name. I told my therapist once that I was searching for my Heathcliff, wild and unyielding. She told me bluntly, “But he’s a bastard.” For years, I wrestled with that.


Was my desire for such raw, sometimes hurtful, undying love foolish?


But now, with softer eyes and time’s quiet wisdom, I see it differently. It’s not a fairytale of love—it’s a story of passion, shadowed and shaped by the world’s cruel expectations. It holds the ache of loving something pure, yet flawed, and destined to struggle.


The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde


A story tangled in vanity and the dread of mortality. Wilde’s words lingered, like a chill under the skin, reminding me of how fragile and dangerous the desire to stay untouched by time can be.


Requiem for a Dream – Hubert Selby Jr.


When I read this, it shattered something inside me.


It’s a brutal, unflinching gaze at our endless hunger—for love, for escape, for something that quiets the ache. The scene where Sara succumbs to that degrading show has never left me. It was not my story, but it felt like a warning whispered directly to me—the way women sometimes sell pieces of themselves just to survive, and how quickly that survival can twist into something unrecognisable.


Lord of the Flies – William Golding


I first read this at school, but its echo has never left me. The cruelty lurking beneath the surface of innocence—how easily kindness can be shattered. Piggy became my quiet companion in that story: persecuted, desperate to belong. His pain was mine, and I understood how fragile our hold on civilisation really is, how thin the veneer.


The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka


I found this on my dad’s dusty bookshelf and was drawn in, though the memory is hazy now. What stayed was a creeping unease—something deeply psychological and strange. The story of a man alienated in his own skin, trapped by a body that no longer feels like his own. It whispers something dark about loneliness and the impossibility of escape.


Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier


This is one of my most beloved books. It’s haunting in a way that feels intimately familiar—the shadow of Rebecca lurking in every room, the cold sharpness of Mrs Danvers, and the trembling uncertainty of the narrator finding herself.


We’ve all felt that pressure to be someone else, someone better, someone whole. It’s a story of invisibility, jealousy, and the desperate need to break free from other people’s stories about us.


The Shining – Stephen King


I loved the film first, but the book… it’s something else entirely. A slow descent into madness wrapped in ghosts and shadows, where the house is alive with pressure and resentment. It’s terrifying because of isolation, family fractures, and the haunted places inside all of us. And how easily we can all slip. It stays, that hauntingly slow burn of madness creeping in, where love should be.





And so these books have been my companions in shadowed moments, each one a quiet voice reaching through the dark. They have held pieces of my heart, mirrored my fears, and whispered truths I was not yet ready to say aloud.


In their pages, I have found both refuge and challenge —

reminders that even in the loneliest hours,

there is choice,

there is understanding,

and there is a fierce,

fragile hope.

©  2016 - 2025 Helen Moores, Little Cottage Therapy.  All Rights Reserved.  Please do not take or use any content without citation.  You are required to obtain written permission to republish in full or use more than just a quote.  Please do not reproduce or publish any content on any platform, including social media, without permission or crediting the original source. 

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