The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You (14 page)

Y
ou’ve got a company to run (see: Dictator, being a), a music lesson and a gymnastics meet to drive to (see: Children, having), dinner to cook for twenty, and your mother is in the hospital (see: Hospital, being in the). You’re underslept, overscheduled, and feel like you’re about to fall to pieces. Well . . . join the club! Being excessively busy is the universal contemporary human plight—boosted to turbo speed lately by the Internet, cell phones, and twenty-four/seven wiredness. Unsurprisingly, this epidemic of busyness is a popular subject among wise and mordant writers who not only recognize the prevalent Joan of Arc–like compulsion toward self-perfection, but the attendant risks of self-immolation. Not to mention the burning fallout.

In Meg Wolitzer’s novel
This Is Your Life
, Dottie Engels is an overweight single mother and stand-up comic whose career is exploding, in a good way. Dottie’s daughters, rather than exulting in their mother’s new fame and applauding her impressive array of gigs, sulk and pout as her star rises. They would rather have a mother who is miserable, weeping, and thwarted, but
at home
with them, instead of one who is ecstatically fulfilled on a spotlit stage taking bow after bow. We’re all for mothers who work, but there’s a limit to the successfulness of success, it seems. If your life is busy because you’ve taken on multiple roles, it’s worth asking whether the success of one might be preventing the success of another.

In Barbara Kingsolver’s
The Poisonwood Bible
, it’s a father, an overzealous missionary named Nathan Price, whose fanatical zeal to convert Congolese forest dwellers to Christianity brings him, his wife, and four daughters to Africa. Price’s quixotic spiritual goals force his family to endure endless privations—including hunger, drudgery, discomfort, and disease on hostile territory. While he works tirelessly, and wrongheadedly, to “improve” the lives of the natives—planting crops that won’t germinate in the region, trying to persuade the natives to be baptized in a river riddled with crocodiles—he neglects his own flesh and blood. There’s an old expression in Spanish to describe such a man:
luz en la calle, oscuridad en la casa
—one who sheds light on strangers on the street, but keeps his own family in the dark. Busyness in and of itself, Kingsolver’s novel suggests, is not a virtue.

If stand-up comedy and bushwhacking don’t feature in your crowded schedule, you and your family can count your blessings. But as you look askance at the frenetic activity of these characters, ask yourself this question: “Is this really so different from my life?” If the answer is no, examine as honestly as you can how much of your to-do list is
really
crucial, and find ways to pare your
horaire
.

See also:
Busy to read, being too
•
Children requiring attention, too many
•
Exhaustion
•
Live instead of read, tendency to
•
Stress

The Spare Room

HELEN GARNER

•   •   •

The Sickness

ALBERTO BARRERA TYSZKA

•   •   •

A Monster Calls

PATRICK NESS

W
hen someone you love is diagnosed with cancer and you suddenly find yourself in the role of carer, it can be a tremendously difficult time. Not only will you need to give your loved one emotional support, absorbing his or her distress as well as managing your own, but you may need to acquire the practical skills of a nurse, as well as a cook, cleaner, accountant, social secretary—indeed all the domestic duties your loved one cannot manage at this time. You will find you are called upon to help make choices about treatment, to engage with doctors, and to act as the go-between with concerned relatives and friends. You may have to deflect or encourage visits depending on how well your loved one feels. And you may find it difficult to tell others when you need a break. Who is going to support you, while you’re doing all this work, giving all this care, and shouldering all these worries?

It helps enormously during times of stress to read about other people who are going through similar things: watching how other people cope or fail to cope will make you feel less alone and give you strength. To this end, here
are three excellent novels that explore the impact of cancer on the lives of those nearest to the patient.

The Spare Room
by Helen Garner deals with both the agonizing and the (albeit darkly) humorous sides of caring for someone with cancer. When the narrator, Hel, hears that her old friend Nicola is coming to Melbourne to undergo alternative treatment for her end-stage bone and liver cancer, she prepares her spare room. It is very quickly apparent to Hel that Nicola is dying—and in denial about it. Hel is furious with the “quack” clinic that’s taking Nicola’s money so freely and giving her false hope. She begins to feel she must tell her friend what the clinic’s therapists, with their bogus vitamin C treatments, are not. As her increasing duties as carer start to take over her life, her rage escalates and she battles against self-hatred—reaching the point where she is desperate for Nicola to get on with her dying somewhere else. Garner shows immense understanding and compassion for her characters, but it is the bitter humor alongside the horror of the situation that makes this such a gripping read. This is a novel for those inclined to beat themselves up when they struggle to care for their patient nonstop. However much you want to help, you still need to be healthy in your own life. It’s also a reminder that, however serious things are, it helps to laugh.

Bodies have few secrets these days, and in the light of our ever increasing ability to detect and predict the course of an illness, the question of honesty, and how much information is too much, is pressing. Surgeon Dr. Andrés in Alberto Barrera Tyszka’s
The Sickness
is in the unusual position of diagnosing his own father’s cancer. The X-rays show that, without a shadow of doubt, his father, Javier, has a stage IV spinocellular carcinoma, and there is nothing that can be done. Having spent years informing his patients of their terminal illnesses—quite brutally, he now realizes—he simply cannot find the right moment to tell his father. Thus begins his questioning of the whole notion of knowledge. Is it, in fact, better for the patient not to know? His relationship with his beloved father has always been strong; now, for the first time, it becomes strained.

He decides to take his father on a weeklong holiday to the Isla Margarita, where his father took him when his mother died. There he will calmly tell his father the news. But when it comes out, it comes at a moment of high emotion. Javier is horrified that Andrés has been keeping it from him and by the burden his illness will place on others. The old man is anguished and distressed, and as his health rapidly deteriorates, he wishes it could all be over swiftly. The shattering of the father-son relationship is painful to watch, and serves as a reminder of how much an illness can strain
a bond, however loving. The message to take away, perhaps, is to try to maintain a sense of “business as usual” in your relationship with your loved one—particularly if that relationship is good. The cancer brings with it enough change as it is.

The question of how to help and protect children when someone in the family is diagnosed with cancer is a fraught one. When and what should they be told? And how will the child be affected outside the home? In Patrick Ness’s
A Monster Calls
, Conor O’Malley’s mother is diagnosed with cancer soon after his father has left the family to live in America with a new partner. When his mother’s hair falls out following chemotherapy, Conor starts being bullied at school—about her bald head, and about his increasingly odd behavior. When his peers realize his mother is dying, they avoid him completely.

One night Conor is visited by a monster in the form of an ancient walking, talking yew tree. The looming tree insists that Conor must call upon his own inner reserves of strength in order to face the months ahead. The yew tree tells him stories, parables that teach him how to deal with the bullies at school, and also with his grandmother, who is helping, badly, to look after him. The monster acts as a catalyst, bringing Conor to confront his woes and, ultimately, helping him find a way to accept his mother’s death. Incredibly moving, this novel is not for the fainthearted. It has the power to force you to face mortality—and will hold your hand as it does so.

Looking after someone with cancer is difficult, both practically and emotionally. For a start, isolate the emotion you battle with most, and see, for instance: Grumpiness; Guilt; Empathy, lack of; Anxiety; Sadness; Stress; and Worry. These novels will help you to stand back from your particular experience and see that others have been there too. And they’ll remind you that being gentle on yourself is just as important as caring for your loved one.

See also:
Busy, being too
•
Cope, inability to
•
Tired and emotional, being
•
Waiting room, being in a

W
hen you’re sitting through chemo, when you’re feeling weak, when your brain refuses to work, when you haven’t the strength for company . . . what you need is a short and perfectly formed piece of prose.

See also:
Hospital, being in the
•
Pain, being in
•
Waiting room, being in a

To the Wedding
JOHN BERGER

Breakfast at Tiffany’s
TRUMAN CAPOTE

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
PHILIP K. DICK

A Simple Heart
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Tinkers
PAUL HARDING

Daisy Miller
HENRY JAMES

Train Dreams
DENIS JOHNSON

An Imaginary Life
DAVID MALOUF

Flush
VIRGINIA WOOLF

The Sisters Brothers

PATRICK DEWITT

I
t’s no small thing to change career when you suspect you’re in the wrong one. For a start, you’re probably too exhausted from doing your current job to have much time to figure out what you could be doing instead. And the thought of all those years of training and experience going down the drain makes you feel faint. As does kissing that nice silver Audi good-bye. As does the thought of the expression on your partner’s face when you let drop that you’ve had enough of your lucrative career and fancy opening a hat shop instead.

It would spoil one of the many delightful sentences in this unputdownable novel to divulge the exact line of work the brothers Charlie and Eli Sisters are engaged in. But suffice it to say it is not an easy one to get out of alive. Set during the crazed days of the California gold rush, younger brother Eli starts to admit to himself that he is ill suited to his profession after passing through a doorway around which a hairless old crone with blackened teeth has hung a string of beads—the sure sign of a hex. The beads may or may not have anything to do with it, but from that point on, Eli finds himself increasingly ashamed of who he is and what he does, and develops a tendency to make decisions that surprise his unsentimental elder brother (see:
Sibling rivalry). When Providence offers him a fine, strong black horse, he rejects it in order to remain loyal to his trusty Tub, a dangerously slow ride and blind in one eye. Soon he is giving his money away to strangers, newly aware of its power to corrupt.

When he comes into contact with Hermann Kermit Warm, a man who has allowed his own interests and ingenuity—plus a desire for honest friendship—to lead him to work he is passionate about, he is filled with admiration and envy. As he watches Hermann reap the benefits, both monetary and spiritual, of his labors, Eli has his Damascene moment. Initiating a shift in the balance of power between himself and his domineering older brother, he persuades Charlie that they should join Warm in his work. Then Eli experiences a moment of pure ecstasy, partly because the physical nature of the work is so pleasant (standing in a river in dappled sun, with a warm wind “pushing down from the valley”), and partly because he is being himself—a self he likes.

Stand with Eli in that river and take inspiration from Hermann Warm. If you, too, could find a way of earning money that brought you spiritual as well as financial rewards—and allowed you to spend your days full of joy—what would it be?

See also:
Dissatisfaction
•
Monday morning feeling
•
Seize the day, failure to
•
Stuck in a rut

The Little Prince

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY