The name inside the cover

An original literary non-fiction-style account of sorting inherited books before moving house.

My aunt had written her name inside every book she owned. Sometimes she added the year. In a dictionary, the letters were small and upright; in a gardening manual, they travelled downhill. I began sorting the books into boxes, assuming that the names would help me decide which belonged together.

A thin book of poems contained someone else's name. Under it, my aunt had written, 'Returned, eventually.' I remembered her complaints about borrowers and put the book in the box marked FAMILY. Then I noticed that the original name belonged to her school friend. My aunt had apparently been the borrower on that occasion. I took the book out again.

My cousin wanted the cookery book with the flour caught in its spine. He had no interest in the expensive volumes I had placed on the table for him. He opened a page where our aunt had crossed out the printed cooking time and written a much shorter one. He said that this was the only version of the recipe he had ever known.

We agreed to let relatives choose before offering the remaining books to a second-hand shop. I made a list of who took each one. Beside the poetry book, however, I wrote a question mark. The school friend's daughter might want it, or she might regard it as one more object to find room for. I photographed the two names and sent her a message before deciding.

By evening, the boxes no longer followed my original categories. A dictionary stood beside a novel because both were going to my brother. I had expected to organise a collection. Instead, I was discovering that the same book could belong to several different stories.

What do you learn about the significance of the books to the narrator and the family?