Just Jennifer

The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You by Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin (Penguin Press, September 20, 2013)

For decades, readers have often sought solace or found a place to escape to in fiction.  Berthoud and Elderkin, who have been sharing novels for twenty-five years and who have run a bibliotherapy service out of The School of Life in London since 2008 have compiled a compendium of ailments and prescribed a novel or two as a “cure” for each.  They have also included short essays on “Reading Ailments” such as “Household Chores, distracted by” and offer up practical remedies (create a reading nook) to solve the problem.

Feeling hopeless? The women recommend Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and the faith George and Lenny have in their futures as a quick pick me up (maybe not the best choice given their fate, though).  Hate your nose?  Try Perfume: The Story of a Murder (Patrick Suskind) which will draw you into an eighteenth-century world where the streets are so fetid that the only thing to do is find pleasing scents and create new ones, all the while garnering a new appreciation for your once despised once.

From A to Z, nothing is taboo.  Plenty of cross references assures that no malady goes forgotten.  A fun book to pick up and thumb through at random even if you are feeling right as rain.