The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You (17 page)

The City and the City

CHINA MIÉVILLE

L
ife in the city can grind you down. The commuting, the hoards, the rush, the anonymity. The drab dreariness of unending concrete, the flashing billboards, the litter, the crime. If your city is making you sick, we implore you: do not step foot outside your door again without first medicating yourself with
The City and the City
by China Miéville. Quite simply the best novel we know of that deals with living in a city, Miéville’s deeply unsettling yet wholly familiar tale will put a 3-D lens on what you had only before seen in 2-D.

Because when you walk down the streets of the fictional city Beszel, you must “unsee” those people who are walking next to you on the street but are
in a different city—a second city, called Ul Qoma, which occupies the same geographical space. To inhabit these overlapping cities successfully, you must study the architectural quirks, the clothing, and even the gait and mannerisms of those living in your city, and how they differ from those living in the parallel city. If you cross from one city to another, you are “in breach”; if you commit breach, you disappear.

Inspector Tyador Borlú has been called to investigate the murder of a female student named Mahalia, which takes place in Bes´el. A thoughtful and intelligent man, Borlú soon realizes that the murder breaches all the rules of living in either city. An academic named Bowden is summoned; he once claimed there was a third, unseen city—Orciny—between Beszel and Ul Qoma. Mahalia seems to have stumbled upon this third city and was conducting her own investigations into it when she was sucked into a dangerous underworld.

The brilliance of this gripping novel—part detective story, part conceptual thriller—rests on the chilling familiarity of a subconscious state of “unnoticing.” How many times have we, too, ignored people in our own city because we think interacting with them may be unsafe? Miéville messes with your brain so immeasurably that you will never be able to look at your own urban sprawl in the same way again. The metropolis you thought you knew will take on a completely new sense of space, reality, and possibility. And you might find yourself seeing a lot of people you somehow missed before.

Little House on the Prairie

LAURA INGALLS WILDER

I
f you’ve a tendency to suffer from claustrophobia, never enter an enclosed space without
Little House on the
Prairie
, second of the nine novels in the much loved series of settler life by frontierswoman Laura Ingalls Wilder. In an instant, you’ll be taking up the reins on the high seat of the covered wagon and riding over the enormous, open Kansas prairies, grasses “blowing in waves of light and shadow” and a great blue sky overhead. There you’ll find Pa—crystallized forever in our minds with the helmet of thick black curls on
actor Michael Landon’s head—splitting logs with swings of his ax, while Ma sits in the shade of the cabin stitching a patchwork quilt and Laura and her sisters hunt for bird’s nests in the long grass, their sunbonnets bouncing against their backs. Before long, you’ll be so plumb tuckered out you’ll be needing a scrub in the tin washbasin, with freshwater brought from the creek. Then you’ll sit down to an open-air supper of cornmeal mush and prairie hen gravy while the notes of Pa’s fiddle wind up into the huge starry sky.

And you’ll have forgotten you are crammed into an immobile elevator with fifteen other people, your nose pressed into someone else’s armpit and no
EXIT
sign or ventilation duct in sight.

See also:
Anxiety
•
Panic attack

The Coffee Story

PETER SALMON

M
any of us are familiar with the rage that descends upon us when in dire need of a decent cup of coffee. The very suggestion that such crimes against nature as “instant” coffee or “camp” coffee could be a reasonable substitute are enough to send the coffee addict into a paroxysm of gut-clenching withdrawal (see: Cold turkey, going). Can literature help at such times? We suggest holing up with some gentle encouragement to steer clear of the rocket fuel—or at least cut down—because if it’s a choice between bad coffee or none, you might as well abstain. The following novel offers you a lot of reasons for not drinking java, but it can’t help but sing a paean to the bean at the same time. So you will be consoled by this cure as well as encouraged to hold back.

In
The Coffee Story
, Theodore T. Everett lies propped up on his deathbed, sipping a coffee “so weak you could read a book through it.” He is determined to tell us the tempestuous story of his life—a life that contained “a wife here and a wife there,” dreams of Africa, Africa itself, an awful memory of bullets hitting flesh, a broken coffee table, a dead child. Among it all, the one constant is coffee, the drink that made it possible to keep going. Teddy
is the last in a line of white coffee moguls who built their wealth on the back of the aromatic bean.

Everett’s intimate knowledge of what coffee does to us physiologically is fascinating and horrifying. How coffee neutralizes the neural inhibitor, adenosine, throughout the body, so that the consumer experiences a rise in nervous activity. So far, so good, thinks the coffee lover. But also how the body reacts by creating additional adenosine, in the expectation that this will be neutralized by more coffee. If more coffee does not come, then the coffee lover begins to experience light-headedness, nausea, and flushing. All of which gives a jolt to the gut not unlike the first hit of coffee of the day. On top of which, we learn of the rotten roots of the coffee trade.

Everett’s story is a grim one, reveling in addiction while scorning it too. It will work on you like a sobering draft of cold water. At the very least, you’ll be reminded to make sure your coffee is from a nonexploitative source. And it may well plant the bean of the idea that alternative beverages would be better for your spiritual and physical health.

Now let that percolate through your system.

See also:
Concentrate, inability to
•
Constipation
•
Cope, inability to
•
Headache
•
Irritability
•
Lethargy

T
here is no cure for the common cold. But it is an excellent excuse to wrap up with a blanket, a cup of hot tea, and a comforting, restorative read.

See also:
Man flu

A Study in Scarlet
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Jamaica Inn
DAPHNE DU MAURIER

The Princess Bride
WILLIAM GOLDMAN

Journey to the River Sea
EVA IBBOTSON

Comet in Moominland
TOVE JANSSON

The Secret Life of Bees
SUE MONK KIDD

How Stella Got Her Groove Back
TERRY MCMILLAN

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
EVA RICE

The Devil Wears Prada
LAUREN WEISBERGER

The Age of Innocence
EDITH WHARTON

T
o combat the physical and emotional agony of weaning yourself off an addiction, you need books that hook, compel, and force you to search your weather-beaten soul. Full immersion is recommended, as is the option of aural administration. These books are unafraid to heave you through withdrawal.

See also:
Anxiety
•
Appetite, loss of
•
Concentrate, inability to
•
Headache
•
Insomnia
•
Nausea
•
Paranoia
•
Sweating

Journey to the End of the Night
LOUIS-FERDINAND CÉLINE

Stuck Rubber Baby
HOWARD CRUSE

The Gathering
ANNE ENRIGHT