The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You (75 page)

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
SHERMAN ALEXIE

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
STEPHEN CHBOSKY

Looking for Alaska
JOHN GREEN

To Kill a Mockingbird
HARPER LEE

The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. SALINGER

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
MURIEL SPARK

Slaughterhouse-Five
KURT VONNEGUT

The Color Purple
ALICE WALKER

A Boy’s Own Story
EDMUND WHITE

The Book Thief
MARKUS ZUSAK

W
e know that being on the water wagon is no bad thing. Life on the straight edge gives you a clearer, purer view, and many health practitioners, unless they’re French, advocate abstinence. But being a teetotaler in a world of
drinkers is terribly dull. There are only so many mocktails you can get through before one of your companions will surprise you with a Death in the Afternoon. And what of that tricky moment when your future father-in-law suggests a manly moment with a malt whiskey? And how do you raise a toast to your great-grandmother on her one hundredth birthday? With a limp-wristed “Lemonade for me”?
*

Literature’s drinkers are generally more fun. And none more so than the great Philip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s detective novels. Our favorite is
Farewell, My Lovely
, though any of them will do. It’ll reacquaint you with the undeniable link between liquor and a certain louche, effortless cool as demonstrated by Marlowe at his most impressive: “I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun.” People who find themselves pursued by Marlowe give him smiles that are at once “cozy and acid,” because they know he’ll extract compromising evidence from them somehow. But he does it with such panache that the baddies are almost honored to be found out. And living as he does by his own sense of justice—handing the culprits over to the police only if he knows them to be irredeemable—he manages to be a force for good but never a goody-goody. And it’s partly down to drink.

Of course, you mustn’t overdo it. But if you tend to be an abstainer, hang out with Marlowe for a novel or two. You’ll find the wily sensibility of this quietly heroic detective will slip into your bloodstream like a rye whiskey highball. And as you turn the pages, go ahead and pour yourself one. Why not?

See also:
Goody-goody, being a
•
Killjoy, being a

See:
Anxiety
•
Stress

London Fields
MARTIN AMIS

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
ANNE BRONTË

Middlesex
JEFFREY EUGENIDES

The Sun Also Rises
ERNEST HEMINGWAY

The Best of Everything
RONA JAFFE

Of Human Bondage
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

The Rector’s Daughter
F. M. MAYOR

The Jungle
UPTON SINCLAIR

Miss Mackenzie
ANTHONY TROLLOPE

All the King’s Men
ROBERT PENN WARREN

The Friday Night Knitting Club

KATE JACOBS

W
hen you’re tired and emotional, what you need is a comforting, warm, and well-told yarn—the literary equivalent of curling up in a hand-knit afghan wrap.
The Friday Night Knitting Club
is your cure.

Georgia is the owner of a knitting shop, Walker and Daughter, in downtown Manhattan. The single mother of beautiful, engaging Dakota, who is just beginning to spread her adolescent wings, Georgia was abandoned by the charismatic but unpredictable James when she got pregnant. So when he makes a reappearance in her life, wanting to make up for all the lost years, she is not exactly thrilled. She’s far more interested in ensuring her business stays afloat and that her Friday night group is happily looked after and fed (with Dakota’s wondrous cookies and muffins). Because clustered together in Georgia’s shop every Friday evening is a rich and diverse mix of strong women she knows she can depend on. With James now back in the picture, her life enters a new phase of uncertainty, and she’ll need the weft of family ties more than ever.

Yes, the yarn metaphors come thick and fast, but to read this novel is to
be cable-stitched into a great warm skein of wool. The gentle nudges toward grannyish wisdom will set you back on course to recovery. As Jacobs writes, “Just grasp that yarn between your fingers and twist. Just start. It’s the same with life.”

See also
:
Cry, in need of a good

The Empress of Ice Cream

ANTHONY CAPELLA

G
one are the days when they whipped them unceremoniously out. Now it’s all about endurance, antibiotics, and sweat.

When the dreaded tonsillitis strikes, here’s a smooth, ice-creamy novel to slip down your throat.
The Empress of Ice Cream
begins in Florence in the seventeenth century when Carlo Demirco, a young boy of lowly origins, comes to assist Ahmad, the Persian ice maker, with his craft. Ahmad’s secrets have been passed down through his family, and he sticks to the traditional recipes: only four basic flavors—orange, rose water, mastic, cardamom—can be used to create four different kinds of ice:
cordiale
,
granite
,
sorbetti
, and sherbets.

Carlo, on the other hand, experiments by making frozen delights from wine,
pesto genovese
, almond milk, crushed fennel, fruits, syrups, and all manner of different creams. He attempts to unlock the deepest secrets frozen into the ice. Then he takes these secrets into the innermost chambers of the court of Charles II, where sex, sorbet, and politics make a potent mix.

So celebrate the continued existence of your tonsils. When infection strikes, relieve your pain with this syllabub of a story, downing spoonfuls of soothing coolness as you read.

See also:
Pain, being in

Anna Karenina

LEO TOLSTOY