In Asia, we’re used to
supplementing antibiotics with a whole range of other therapies: Ayurveda, TCM,
Malay Traditional Medicine, and so on and so forth. Now readers can try
bibliotherapy: the prescribing of fiction for life’s ailments, physical, or
emotional. Or so bibliotherapists Ella
Berthoud and Susan Elderkin suggest. They have collaborated on The Novel Cure, a pharmacopoeia – with a
difference.
Rather than listing drugs, and describing how to use them, The Novel Cure suggests novels that
may be used as salves for anything from abandonment,
to zestlessness, as their subtitle
has it, or from, say family, coping with,
to family, coping without, and from cancer, having (quite ambitious, that
one), to teetotaler, being a (in
world of drinkers, so not, say in Malaysia, or Indonesia.)
Depending where you are, you may
find physical copies of either the UK (Canongate) or US (Penguin) editions of The Novel Cure available in bookshops, in either paperback,
or hardback, priced in local currencies, or, if you have an account with Amazon
either in the UK or the US, you can download it as an eBook. It is also available
in several Asian editions: in Korea through Random House; in Taiwan through Rye Field; in China through Horizon Media; in India through Roli Books.
Ella and Susan also offer an online surgery. To test it out, I sent in a request for help with an ailment I
think often (mistakenly) bedevils writers and readers in Asia: the sense that all
the action literature-wise, writing-wise and publishing-wise, takes place in
London, New York, or, at a pinch, Sydney:
Dear Ella and
Suse,
I feel very much like I am far from the centre of things, living on the margins. Can you give me literary solace?
Yours,
On the Margins.
I feel very much like I am far from the centre of things, living on the margins. Can you give me literary solace?
Yours,
On the Margins.
In return, I got an excellent prescription:
Dear Living on the Margins,
This is an ailment which many of us feel, even when some would say that we live in the thick of it. For some, living in the heart of London still feels marginal, as they may feel that way for social or political reasons as much as geographical ones. So this ailment is a very pertinent one for many of our readers. There are many books that investigate this feeling, from classic literature with books like Homer’s Odyssey tackling the theme, to Remembering Babylon by David Malouf, in which an English boy is marooned on an island with only aborigines for company - but when Europeans settle on the island he attempts to rejoin the European world, which of course is not easy.
This is an ailment which many of us feel, even when some would say that we live in the thick of it. For some, living in the heart of London still feels marginal, as they may feel that way for social or political reasons as much as geographical ones. So this ailment is a very pertinent one for many of our readers. There are many books that investigate this feeling, from classic literature with books like Homer’s Odyssey tackling the theme, to Remembering Babylon by David Malouf, in which an English boy is marooned on an island with only aborigines for company - but when Europeans settle on the island he attempts to rejoin the European world, which of course is not easy.
We think
that what you need to read now, however, is the recently published An
Unnecessary Woman by Rabeh Alammedine. The heroine of this ruminative novel is
a Lebanese lady of 72 who has devoted her life to translating books into
Arabic, none of which have ever been read by anyone else but her. Aaliya is
unapologetically her own person, unattractively dressed, unfriendly to her
neighbours, more able to inhabit the skin of an Alice Munro character than
to be able to relate to her own mother or siblings. “I long ago abandoned
myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox … If
literature is my sandbox, then the real world is my hourglass – an hourglass
that drains grain by grain. Literature gives me life, and life kills me.” But
her love of literature is what animates her and the book, and what shows that
living on the margins can be true of anyone in any place, but it doesn’t make
you any less important, or make your life any less valid, than the people that
live in the very centre of it all.
Once you’ve read this, pick up the ever-brilliant Life: A User’s Manual by
Georges Perec, in which Bartlebooth is the main character of a book full of
people doing rather unnecessary and pointless things, living in the centre of
Paris. Their worlds are rich, colourful and fantastical, but their directions
in life are seemingly inconsequential. You will be heartened by this vicarious
experience of a life at the centre of a great metropolis, and realise again
that your own ‘marginal’ existence is no less valid than theirs.
Yours,
Ella and Suse
Yours,
Ella and Suse
We prescribe: An Unnecessary
Woman by Rabeh Alammedine; Life: A User's Manual by Georges Perec
For more information
on bibliotherapy click here.
Ella and Susan offer one-to-one sessions, which can be done either by Skype or by phone, even if you can’t get to London in person.
