The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You (13 page)

See also:
Hope, loss of
•
Identity crisis

See:
Eating disorder

Cat’s Eye

MARGARET ATWOOD

•   •   •

Tom Brown’s School Days

THOMAS HUGHES

B
ullying comes in many forms. Among boys, it tends to be aggressive and physical. Among girls, spiteful and verbal. And although we tend to think of it as a childhood phenomenon, it happens just as much among adults—in the workplace and at home. Both our cures are about bullying among young people, but they capture an ingredient common to all: the shame or bewilderment of the victims, which, at least initially, prevents them from seeing the situation for what it is. If you suspect you are being bullied, these novels will give you some perspective. Perhaps you’ll recognize the techniques the bullies use to assert their authority. And depending on whether you’re the sort to crumble or fight back, you may recognize one or the other response. If you do, speak out.

When middle-aged Elaine returns to Toronto for a retrospective of her paintings in Margaret Atwood’s chilling
Cat’s Eye
,
she wonders whether she’ll bump into her old friend Cordelia, and, if so, what she will say. Cordelia was the most powerful and alluring of a trio of girls at school (the others being Carol and Grace) to whom she became joined at the hip—the one Elaine most wanted to please. Whenever Cordelia had a “friend day,” putting her arm through Elaine’s and singing and laughing together, Elaine would feel gratitude—and anxiety. Sooner or later she knew Cordelia would turn from friend to foe and, as the ringleader of the group, encourage Carol and Grace to do the same. In Toronto, when Elaine finds a marble like a cat’s eye, given to her years earlier by her brother Stephen, it brings to the surface a traumatic memory she’s long blanked out.

Anyone who has been bullied will recognize Elaine’s emotional numbness and won’t be surprised by her failure to remove herself from the damaging trio. Victims of bullying often don’t realize they’re being bullied at first, and in a perverse act of complicity, the bullied may even be drawn to the bully, craving acceptance while dreading rejection and scorn. Like Elaine, the bullied can become so browbeaten that they lack the strength and belief in themselves to overcome their abusers (if this applies to you, see: Self-esteem, low). Only when things finally go too far does Elaine wake up and discover the power to walk away, if she wants to: “It’s like stepping off a cliff,
believing the air will hold you up. And it does.” If Elaine’s story resonates with you, learn to walk away before the numbness occurs.

No such crumbling goes on between Tom and his bully Flashman in Thomas Hughes’s
Tom Brown’s School Days
. No sooner has Tom arrived at Rugby School than the appalling Flashman does his best to make Tom’s life a misery. Flashman threatens and physically attacks Tom, and it all comes to a head when the older boy instigates a “burning” of Tom in front of an open fire. It is at this point that Tom decides to do something about the injustices he and his fellows have experienced at the hands of all the school bullies. It helps that Tom has become strong and feisty and, crucially, that he has earned the respect of older boys, one of whom comes to his aid in bringing Flashman down.

Tom’s triumph over his oppressors will leave you elated and inspired. It is Hughes’s acknowledgment of the lasting damage inflicted on Tom, though, you may find most cathartic: it takes Tom months to undo Flashman’s blackening of his name among his peers, even after the bullying has stopped. And who knows how long the emotional scars will remain (see: Scars, emotional)? For Elaine in
Cat’s Eye
they last into middle age, but by revisiting the scene of her childhood trauma, she achieves redemption. Take heart from these two literary victims. They may struggle with the effects of bullying for a long time, but they come out stronger in the end.

See also:
Anxiety
•
Left out, feeling
•
Nightmares
•
Superhero, wishing you were a

A Death in the Family

JAMES AGEE

Y
ou may not think of yourself as a bully. But if you ever purposefully inflict pain on someone more vulnerable than you—even in an unthinking way, and perhaps verbally rather than physically—you may well be guilty of this shameful practice. If you know deep down that you do, we ask you to read
A Death
in the Family
, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1958 and one of the most moving accounts of bullying that we know.

Rufus lives on a “mixed sort of block” in Knoxville, Tennessee. It’s a place where supper’s at six and over by half past, at which point the children go out to play while the mothers clean the kitchen and the fathers hose down
the lawns. Rufus, not yet old enough for school himself, likes to watch the older children going back and forth to school. First he watches them from the front window, then from the front yard, and then from the sidewalk outside his house. Finally he dares to stand on the street corner, where he can see them coming from three directions. He admires their different pencils and lunch boxes, and the way the boys swing their books in the brown canvas straps—until, that is, they start swinging them at his head. The bullying quickly builds to daily mockery and humiliation. Desperate to believe that they can be trusted—that their pretense of friendship is for real—Rufus walks into the traps they set for him again and again, much to the bullies’ mounting hilarity. He is younger than all of them, and their violation of his guileless trust is exquisitely painful to witness.

Agee was a poet first and foremost and his agile prose delves into emotional crevices previously unexplored. When Rufus suffers a tragedy he is too young to fully comprehend—and the bullies make no amends—the reader’s heartbreak is complete.

If you’re guilty of exploiting another’s weakness—whether on the playground, in the home, or at work—and have never paused to think about the effects of your behavior on your victim, we defy you to read this novel and remain a bully thereafter. If you know you were a bully in your youth, see: Guilt, and then move on. Sadly, you may know only too well what it’s like to be bullied—many bullies were bullied themselves first. If you belong in this camp, switching sides is not the answer. See our cure for Bullied, being, above.

See also:
Dictator, being a

The Belly of Paris

ÉMILE ZOLA

D
omestically speaking, there are few things more catastrophic than burning the dinner. Whether you have slaved for hours over a
daube de boeuf
or rustled up some
crêpes suzette
, a scorched, acrid offering fit only to be flung out onto the garden path for scavenging animals will leave you not just hungry, but ill-humored. On such occasions, grab
The Belly of Paris
, the third novel to be published in Zola’s multigenerational Rougon-Macquart saga.

It tells the story of Florent Quenu, who returns to his native Paris to live with his family in an apartment on the edge of the newly rebuilt Les Halles food market. As you wander with him here, you will find meat, vegetables, fruit, and cheese, all laid out before you with mouthwatering voluptuousness. Take your pick from stuffed Strasbourg tongues “red and looking as if they had been varnished,” pâtés, casseroles, pickling jars of sauces and stocks, preserved truffles, salmon “gleaming like well-buffed silver,” and peaches with “clear, soft skin like northern girls.” Soon you’ll be dribbling with desire and rushing to your nearest farmers’ market for more.

Even if you hadn’t burned it, your dinner would not have been as tasty as the delicacies offered up to us by Zola. Tell this to your guests; convince them by reading from this novel aloud. And next time you go shopping, stock up on glorious fruits and fish and cheeses—you can serve them up without needing to turn the oven on.

See:
Lust

This Is Your Life

MEG WOLITZER

•   •   •

The Poisonwood Bible

BARBARA KINGSOLVER