The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You (40 page)
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Authors: Ella Berthoud,Susan Elderkin
In Ali’s
Brick Lane
, Nazneen has left her village in Bangladesh for an arranged marriage in London to Chanu, an older Bangladeshi man with “a face like a frog.” Though she misses her sister and her native land, Nazneen accepts her fate, having believed since childhood that “since nothing could be changed, everything had to be borne.” But she doesn’t find London terribly hard to bear; she adjusts, gives birth to two daughters, and gets used to her gossipy immigrant neighborhood. Only when Nazneen falls in love with a stranger does she think of returning to Bangladesh; and that is not because she wants to go “home”—she intuitively knows that “where she wanted to go was not a different place but a different time.” Rather, she wants to escape the tumult of the love affair. It’s Nazneen’s husband, Chanu, whose nostalgia finally puts him on a plane back to Dhaka. He tells a London friend that Benglalis in England never really belong to their new country: “Their bodies are here but their hearts are back there,” he proclaims. But Nazneen disagrees, and so do her daughters, for them, London is their true home. And that is the cure for homesickness that “Brick Lane” provides; the demostration of how, slowly, organically, even the most unfamiliar surroundings can evolve into the place where you belong. The cure for homesickness, in other words, is time.
See also:
Family, coping without
•
Foreign, being
•
Loneliness
•
Lost, being
•
Yearning, general
Maurice
E. M. FORSTER
O
nce, not so very long ago, homosexuality was seen as an aberration, a perversion, a sickness. Even though gay men and women enjoy greater acceptance and equality than ever before, homophobia is still very much alive—but the tables have turned: homophobia is now the sickness in need of correction. For those still harboring sexual prejudice—whether openly or in the dark recesses of their heart—we implore you to read
Maurice
, arguably the first modern novel dealing with homosexuality.
It is impossible not to be moved by this story of male love. From the first stirrings in Maurice’s heart when he meets Clive Durham at Cambridge, to his initial refusal—both to himself and to Clive—of that love, any reader will recognize the tender connection and the gentle eroticism of their touch. Ultimately Maurice turns from inward self-loathing to outward fury at a world that won’t allow him, and his deepest emotions, to be “normal.” He finds himself increasingly surrounded by unenlightened, hateful souls—even Clive, who first enabled his love, but who becomes the worst oppressor of them all.
Share Maurice’s sad joy at overcoming his own hypocrisy. Burn with his rage at the society in which he has to live with “the wrong words on his lips and the wrong desires in his heart.” Ache with him at the devastating loneliness he’s left with when Clive finally rejects him in disgust. And be thankful that we no longer live at a time when an author would not dare to publish this novel during his own lifetime. (It was published in 1913, after Forster’s death.)
Maurice
does not speak in euphemisms. If you are homophobic, you will have no choice but to confront your fears and prejudices and—hopefully—see that the characters are as human as us all.
See also:
Hatred
•
Judgmental, being
See:
Beans, temptation to spill the
Of Mice and Men
JOHN STEINBECK
W
e can cope with anything as long as we have hope. If you don’t believe this, it’s time for you to pick up Steinbeck’s classic
Of Mice and Men
. George and Lennie are itinerant farmhands. They arrive at a new ranch, “work up a stake,” then go to town and blow it all. With no family, no home, nothing more to look forward to in life, they consider their kind to be the “loneliest guys in the world.” Except that they are different—as George keeps telling Lennie. One day, he says, they will hit the jackpot and have enough money to buy themselves a little house and a few acres on which to keep a cow and some chickens and “live off the fatta the lan’.” George loses his faith in this dream eventually, but continues to nurture it in Lennie. He knows life is easier with hope.
See also:
Broken dreams
•
Despair
See:
Adolescence
•
Cry, in need of a good
•
Menopause
•
PMS
•
Pregnancy
•
Teens, being in your
•
Tired and emotional, being
W
hen we’re in the hospital, we desire the tender administrations of angels—or an escape to somewhere wild and woolly. Take your pick.
See also:
Boredom
•
Pain, being in
ANGELS
Skellig
DAVID ALMOND
Good Omens
NEIL GAIMAN AND TERRY PRATCHETT
The Vintner’s Luck
ELIZABETH KNOX
Mr. Pye
MERVYN PEAKE
Gabriel’s Angel
MARK RADCLIFFE
ADVENTURES
The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts
LOUIS DE BERNIÈRES
The African Queen
C. S. FORESTER
The Woman and the Ape
PETER HØEG
The Bean Trees
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
The Call of the Wild
JACK LONDON
READING AILMENT
Household chores, distracted by
CURE
Create a reading nook
I
f there isn’t a meal to cook, there’s vacuuming to be done. And if the vacuuming’s done, there’s the bathroom to clean. If the bathroom is clean, there’s the fridge to sort. And if the fridge has been sorted, it’s probably time you went shopping. And when you come back, there’ll be the laundry, the beds, the car washing, the garden, the recycling, the trash, and all the other myriad tasks that living in a house demands. What hope is there for one dreaming of a precious hour tucked away with a book?
Create a cozy reading nook—a dedicated space where you go to read. This should be in a small and enclosed corner of your house or garden—an alcove, a study, behind the curtains in a large bay window. The important thing is that when you are nestled inside it, you cannot see anything that needs your attention.
Make your nook deliciously warm and inviting. If you like to curl up on the floor, fill it with cushions and a furry rug. If you prefer to stretch out, treat yourself to an elegant chaise longue.
You’ll need good lighting in your nook, a soft blanket, socks or slippers, and a flat surface on which to put some books, your reading journal, a pencil, and a cup of tea. Keep earplugs in there, and a set of headphones for audiobooks. Hang a sign at the entrance to your nook gently dissuading others from visiting—unless they, too, want to crawl inside and read.
Once inside your nook, forget about the chores. Take your hour with your book. With luck, someone might see you in there and do the chores instead.
Little Children
TOM PERROTTA
• • •
House-Bound
WINIFRED PECK
• • •
Diary of a Mad Housewife
SUE KAUFMAN
• • •
The Stepford Wives
IRA LEVIN
• • •
The Ten-Year Nap
MEG WOLITZER
O
n the surface, you’re the perfect wife and mother—content to stay at home and look after your spouse and children. But are your cleaning products shelved in alphabetical order? Do you have unnaturally gleaming grapefruit spoons? Do you dress like a belly dancer to greet your husband at the door when he returns from work? If so, all is not well underneath. Perhaps you find you need to self-medicate with a shot of vodka before you pick up the kids in the afternoon. And that you are just a bit too obsessed with plumping your scatter cushions. You could be suffering from being a housewife in the clinical sense and need to draw from our Valu-Pak of cures to wrench yourself away from the kitchen sink.
