“It may be more accurate to say that despair, owing to some evil trick played upon the sick brain by the inhabiting psyche, comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room. And because no breeze stirs this cauldron, because there is no escape from the smothering confinement, it is natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion.” - William Styron
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Given my own experiences with depression, anxiety, and self-harm, it’s no surprise that I’ve grown increasingly interested in fictional portrayals of mental illness. Where literature has started to move away from the ‘mad woman in the attic’ syndrome of portraying mental illness as the worst kind of social deviance, representation still has a long way to go. While there have been many applaudable efforts to write the details of psychological disorders into fiction, it is also the case that many of these accounts come from those who’ve witnessed illnesses such as OCD, depression, and bipolar as second or third hand observers. And although fiction must have a door open to narratives that diverge from the first-hand experience of an author (what, after all, would be the point of fiction otherwise?), it does an undeniable disservice to literature when we ignore the absence of mentally ill voices in fiction. Much as we refuse to call it representation where most fictionalisations of the female experience are written by men (a balance that continues to shift), it is not true representation when mental illness is written almost exclusively by those who have not suffered it. On The Book Habit today, I’m looking at the history of mental illness in fiction and asking where exactly the right to representation lies. Click the link in my bio to have a read!
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“Even in death the boys were trouble. The secret graveyard lay on the north side of the Nickel campus, in a patchy acre of wild grass between the old work barn and the school dump…The discovery of the bodies was an expensive complication for the real estate company awaiting the all clear from the environmental study, and for the state’s attorney, which had recently closed an investigation into the abuse stories. Now they had to start a new inquiry, establish the identities of the deceased and the manner of death, and there was no telling when the whole damned place could be razed, cleared, and neatly erased from history, which everyone agreed was long overdue.”
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In ‘The Nickel Boys’, Colson Whitehead has once again lent his profound narrative skill to the exploration of America’s shadowed history. Where he played with genre, time, and place to bring unique authority to bear on the story of the Underground Railroad, ‘The Nickel Boys’ offers a straight, albeit expertly fictionalised, historical account of Florida’s Dozier School for Boys. Told through the experiences of Elwood Curtis, a teenager sentenced to time at the Nickel Academy reform school (the fictionalised version of the Dozier School), Whitehead unpicks the systematically-enforced (and systemically-ignored) history of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse perpetrated by school overseers on its young victims. In many respects, ‘The Nickel Boys’ feels like a natural successor to Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘The Underground Railroad’. Exploring slavery’s legacy and racism’s determined inheritance in the era of civil rights, ‘The Nickel Boys’ is an incredible example of what literature can achieve when written at the limits of its humanistic potential. Click the link in my bio to read the full review! .
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“Perhaps this is what the stories meant when they called somebody heartsick. Your heart and your stomach and your whole insides felt empty and hollow and aching.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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Although usually associated with the drama of teenage first loves or the self-indulgence of a real-life Bridget Jones, heartbreak is one of the most complex and misunderstood of emotional challenges. While often the product of romantic rejection, heartbreak can be as much a consequence of altered or lost circumstances as ended relationships. Resulting largely from our attachment and identification with the thing that we’ve lost, heartbreak’s symptoms can range from melancholy and disrupted sleep patterns to severe depression and diagnosable heart conditions. Even at its least severe, heartbreak can pose a real challenge to those who have found rejection in something to which their self-worth and visions of the future were intrinsically tied. Given the commonality of heartbreak, it’s no surprise that literature deals copiously with the matter of a broken heart. In this month’s post for The Book Habit’s bibliotherapy series, I’m exploring the ways in which fiction can help us to navigate heartbreak - whether we’re preparing for its inevitability or already knee-deep in its symptoms - and making some recommendations for books to help. Click the link in my bio to have a read and let me know whether you’ve ever used fiction to combat heartbreak! 💖
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“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that great age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked.”
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In my ongoing to attempts to combat homesickness and the fallout of displacement, I’ve been turning increasingly to fiction as a place to work through my feelings. Not only has literature proved a worthy comrade in my efforts to find my footing in a new country, it is also full of critically important insights on what ‘belonging’ truly means. I turned to John Steinbeck’s travelogue ‘Travels with Charley in Search Of America’ expecting to access some new revelations on US culture and history from the perspective of one of its most authentic literary voices. While this is certainly part of what I found, ‘Travels with Charley’ proved to be so much more than I anticipated. Written by Steinbeck to document the 10,000 miles he travelled in an effort to reacquaint himself with his own country, the book is an intensely moving and passionate reflection on what it means to feel displaced within one’s own country. Dealing with the ramifications of the Cold War, the cripplingly public presence of racism in the Civil Rights era, and the journey of a culture toward increasingly dismissive consumerism, ‘Travels with Charley’ is a call for us to uncover the full range of our nation’s voices - however vitriolic and challenging - if we are to truly understand our own. Click the link in my bio to read a full review!
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“Just as the painter Rubens amused himself with being the ambassador to the court of St. James’s – a sufficient career in itself for most busy men – so Mrs. Lucas amused herself, in the intervals of her pursuit of art for art’s sake, with being not only an ambassador but a monarch. Riseholme might perhaps, according to the crude materialism of maps, be included in the kingdom of Great Britain, but in a more real and inward sense it formed a complete kingdom of its own, and its queen was undoubtedly Mrs. Lucas, who ruled it with a secure autocracy pleasant to contemplate at a time when thrones were toppling, and imperial crowns whirling like dead leaves down the autumn winds.”
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I stumbled across E.F. Benson’s enchantingly vibrant ‘Mapp and Lucia’ stories at a time of serious need. My life had taken a series of dramatic turns and I found myself jobless, homeless, and thousands of miles away from my then-fiancé. As per my usual method of coping with life’s challenges, I turned to the library for comfort - and it’s there that I discovered the socially turbulent worlds of Benson’s fictional English utopias. The ‘Mapp and Lucia’ stories centre around two effective monarchs of village life - Miss Elizabeth Mapp and Mrs. Emmeline (‘Lucia’) Lucas - as they work to depose any potential obstacles to their respective reigns. When the two are brought into collision in the sweet seaside town of Tilling, however, war ensues - a battle waged over evening bridge parties, musical evenings, and Lucia’s well-guarded recipe for Lobster a la Riseholme. With a humour that rivals P.G. Wodehouse and a depth of insight that far exceeds him, Benson is a master of early-20th century social satire. ‘Mapp and Lucia’ is exquisite - the perfect remedy to just about any of life’s troubles. Click the link in my bio to read a full review! 🌻
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As a self-proclaimed lover of classic novels, I’ve often wondered what exactly makes a book a ‘classic’ (beyond uniting high school students in dismay and confusion). T.S. Eliot supposed that there is no such thing as a ‘classic’, except for anything by Virgil. On the opposite side, Italo Calvino developed 14 separate criteria for use in determining whether or not a novel should be awarded ‘classic’ status (before concluding that it will vary from person to person and we will all ultimately have “our own ideal libraries of classics”). In today’s article on The Book Habit, I’ve pulled some of the research and definitions of classic literature in an attempt to answer the question ‘what exactly makes a classic a classic?’. Click the link in my bio to have a read, and let me know what you think ‘defines’ a classic! .
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And please enjoy my new collection of John Steinbeck novels! Shipped from across an ocean because I was compelled by these incredible covers. Props to @penguinbooks and their modern classics collection!
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