“For Nabokov, another reading was always constructive. But for Spacks, rereading—though satisfying for pure literary analysis—can reveal unwelcome truths about our past selves, and cause disenchantment—in the most literal sense—with the books we used to love.”

The Book Bench reviews Patricia Meyer Spack’s On Rereading, describing it as a combination of “memoir, literary criticism, and scientific treatise,” and zeroing in on the  book’s central tension between Spack’s affinity for rereading and her doubts about the act.