Reading for Normal: Young People and Fiction in the Time of Covid-19

Key Findings
We found that reading fictional representations of ordinary life can help young readers better manage periods of uncertainty and instability. In particular, this gain emerges when young people can inhabit 'a common literary domain': in other words, when they can find safe and stimulating common ground for exploring shared experiences with other readers in their generational cohort. The Reading for Normal project established this common dwelling in fiction with a cohort by using contemporary British young adult fiction as the stimulus for discussion, and ensuring that participants encountered readers who had been through the same generational journal but who were from different parts of the UK. We found that these conditions created three specific affordances: authenticity, belonging, and connection. We also found that the temporary community provided by digital reading groups was considered to be a positive outcome by participants.

Authenticity manifested in a feeling of not being alone for some participants; for others, it meant recognising the experience of others who talked about difficult circumstances or feelings reflected in the YA novels read during the project. Sharing responses in safe discussion groups provided further legitimisation, as participants recognised that other readers in their generational cohort – readers like them but not those implicated in the structures of their more immediate peer cohorts at home or school – also saw their identities and experiences reflected back through fiction.

Discussion of portrayals of familiar places and normal activities in the YA novels encouraged forms of belonging between readers from different parts of the country. Through the practice of reading attentively and recognising descriptions of ordinariness in the texts, participants developed a sense of belonging to a group of people with cultural knowledge and capital. This was a shared experience that readers from different backgrounds felt bound them into a kind of privileged “club.”

In thinking about their everyday lives, our participants nearly all noted the value of finding a sense of community and connection with others through shared interests. Finding people with similar interests and passions online - even when they are reading material books - helped our participants feel less alone, and seeing these kinds of friendships represented in fiction added an extra dimension, allowing them to understand the phenomenon as both normal and full of potential for the future.

Advances in Knowledge
The Reading for Normal project filled a gap in existing reader-response research in focusing on British realist YA and aspects of ordinariness. By encouraging young readers to interrogate their own sense of “normality” in the face of the “new normal” of the Covid-19 pandemic we were also working to counter some of the outcomes of other reading group studies, which has been found to – consciously or not – entrench certain social and cultural norms. Our method and approach helped young readers understand themselves as responding to and shaping ideas of normality (including the new normal of their generational cohort’s lockdown life), rather than engaging in images or narratives that might provoke a desire to become “more normal,” that is, more normalised.

We also advanced understanding of the benefits that might come from reading and reading groups: in particular, finding that an online reading community may only be short-lived, but that this is part of its value: teenage participants have already learned that seemingly more concrete relationships such as friendships or school cohorts are fragile constructs in the face of crises.