The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You (65 page)
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Authors: Ella Berthoud,Susan Elderkin
A hilarious black comedy involving the gruesome and unlikely disposal of bodies and socially challenged evildoers getting their just deserts, this novel is guaranteed to keep you safely away from the surgeon’s knife. Learn to love your scars. They are a part of your history and the narrative that lives on your skin.
The Tiger’s Wife
TÉA OBREHT
S
chadenfreude
is a cruelly mirthful German expression that means “delight in the misfortunes of others.” Now . . . why would you want to do that? We hope you don’t. But if you are susceptible to this sniggering affliction—if, perchance, you peruse Gawker or the tabloids with wicked relish—we suggest that you read the haunting, lyrical novel
The Tiger’s Wife
to reset your moral bearings.
Its author, the gifted young Téa Obreht, who was born in Belgrade in 1985 but now lives in the United States, sets her novel in the aftermath of the various Balkan wars of the 1990s but reaches much further back, to World War II and beyond, to the violent battles in the region that have pitted Muslim against Christian, German against Slav, human against animal, man against wife since records were kept.
Natalia was a sweet little girl in the 1980s, fond of walking with her doctor grandfather to the zoo. Her grandfather would tell her stories from Rudyard Kipling, mingling them with stories that she assumed were made-up fables, about his boyhood life in a mountain village during the impoverished years of the Second World War. He particularly admired the tiger in the Belgrade zoo, inspiring him to share with her the “mythic” tale of a previous tiger in the zoo, which had fled in terror from the bombs of the war and sought refuge in the mountains of his village. A battered mute woman, the wife of the town’s angry butcher, secretly tended to the beast.
But as she grows up in Belgrade during a new wartime, Natalia loses her taste for her grandfather’s company and becomes a jaded teenager. Kids
her age at school joke about the war, joke about the bombs, joke about the destruction—charged with gleeful adolescent schadenfreude. Now in the early millennium, Natalia, who has become a doctor like her grandfather, visits border towns in Croatia to treat sick orphans whose parents were killed by the bombs and soldiers she and her school friends had smirked about. Schadenfreude no longer seems as funny as it used to.
In
The Tiger’s Wife
, Obreht seamlessly weaves together myths of the past and myths of the present, showing with disconcerting power how these myths pervade real life, and teaching you what not to mock.
See also:
Misanthropy
READING AILMENT
Sci-fi, fear of
CURE
Rethink the genre
O
ne of the most common absences in the reading galaxy of an otherwise well-rounded reader is that cluster of novels that falls under the banner of science fiction. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the term has the capacity to send a chill down the spine. Perhaps it conjures images of aliens, spaceships, and intergalactic warfare—with no human hearts in the throng. Perhaps the non-sci-fi reader is unable to see how unreal worlds could possibly relate to the world outside their own door.
Or perhaps readers are put off by an umbrella term that fails to communicate the range and quality of the genre. Instead of science fiction, think of it as “speculative fiction,” as Margaret Atwood puts it—fiction that explores the possible directions in which the human race could go. Writers of speculative fiction have famously predicted our present: Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and John Brunner all envisaged the gadgets of today fifty years ago. The writers of such fiction now will predict, and in
some ways shape, our tomorrow—and continue to serve as an early warning system. Think, for instance, about how literature has pointed up the dangers of genetic engineering (Margaret Atwood’s
Oryx and Crake
), bioengineering (John Wyndham’s
The Day of the Triffids
), and social engineering (George Orwell’s
1984
). If, as readers, we consider ourselves students of what it is to be human, shouldn’t we be as interested in our future selves as we are in our selves of the past?
In many ways sci-fi is a natural progression from the magical worlds we inhabited as children.
*
Speculative fiction opens up parallel universes to which we can escape and exercise our love for all things beyond our ken. Close off these speculative worlds at your peril.
THE TEN BEST NOVELS FOR SCI-FI BEGINNERS
Transcending the bounds of their genre, these books have run AWOL to classic status. Almost without realizing it, you will be converted to brave new worlds—within yourself as well as in fiction.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Year of the Flood
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Drowned World
J. G. BALLARD
Neuromancer
WILLIAM GIBSON
Brave New World
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Never Let Me Go
KAZUO ISHIGURO
A Wrinkle in Time
MADELEINE L’ENGLE
The Left Hand of Darkness
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The War of the Worlds
H. G. WELLS
The Chrysalids
JOHN WYNDHAM
READING AILMENT
Sci-fi, stuck on
CURE
Discover planet Earth
Y
ou only ever read sci-fi. There is not a single book jacket in your house that doesn’t glitter with an alien glow. Sci-fi has become a reading black hole, and you have fallen in. While we applaud your imagination and your ability to take mental leaps with the laws of physics, we urge you to apply such well-exercised minds to artistic representations of the planet outside your front door. Because there are other literary universes out there. We suggest you take a tour of this unchartered territory.
Begin with Tolstoy’s
War and Peace
, the great Russian epic that, like
Dune
by Frank Herbert, spans three generations of war and politics while never losing sight of the individuals caught up in the spokes of the wheels. Move on to
The Glass Bead Game
by Hermann Hesse, a novel reassuringly set in the twenty-fifth century but concerning itself with philosophical and spiritual matters. Next read Michel Faber’s
Under the Skin
, a genre-crossing novel that will suck you in, then zap you with a powerful shock. Allow
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
, Angela Carter’s exuberant magic-realist extravaganza, to introduce you to reality-distorting machines that mess with your mind. And Jeanette Winterson’s genre-defying
The Passion
will leave you probing the underbelly of site-specific fiction. From here it’s only a short step to all those other novels set in unfamiliar parts of our own planet. Now work your way through our list of Ten Best Novels to Cure Wanderlust (see: Wanderlust). By the end you’ll be officially cured of your space-lust.
History of a Pleasure Seeker
RICHARD MASON
O
f all life’s skills, those pertaining to the gentle art of seduction are perhaps the hardest to come by, while also, surely, being some of the most crucial for a happy and satisfying life. But where do we turn to acquire them? We observe our parents with horror, our friends with amusement, and Hollywood movies with disbelief. Can literature come to our bedside rescue?
The answer is yes, of course, for seduction has been explored from Ovid to E. L. James by way of Anaïs Nin and
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
. But you have to pick and choose with care, as not all of the ardent lovers in these novels use strategies we’d care to encourage. For the best all-around handbook, offering a skill set that poses the least risk to oneself and others, we suggest
History of a Pleasure Seeker
, Richard Mason’s racy tale of sexual and social conquest.
Piet Barol has many natural, physical advantages that make him attractive to women—and, in fact, to many men (and this arch-seducer is not one to let gender mess with his mojo). He’s unafraid to use them, too, but he doesn’t rely on looks alone. From his earliest youth, his mother, a singing teacher, taught him to read the emotions and thoughts of others. As he accompanied her students on the piano, he used the lessons to practice these silent skills, holding the gaze of the prettiest pupils while they sang.
In fact, much of Piet’s seductive charm comes from his knowledge of music. Although not a great pianist himself, he knows when to choose a flirtatious Bizet over an abstract Bach, and when he applies for the job of tutor to young Egbert at the house of Jacobina Vermeulen-Sickerts, he remembers his mother telling him that the “only key for love is E flat major.” And so his seduction of Jacobina begins.
Piet has ample opportunity to flex his skills, for there are two daughters in the household, as well as Jacobina, who has not been touched by her husband for a decade. His impressive draftsmanship, his ready wit, his awareness of the nuances of manners and clothing all stand him in very good stead. Even a fellow staff member, Didier, becomes enslaved. Neither does he restrict himself to the Vermeulen-Sickerts household. On an impulse, he
emigrates to South Africa on the lavishly appointed
Eugénie
, where he encounters even more opportunities to seduce.
Throughout the novel, there is a recurring motif of a man on a tightrope, balancing precariously. It’s perfect, for seduction is a high-risk art, and one is always close to falling. Take lessons from Piet: use your natural advantages, step boldly where others (husbands, for example) fear to tread, and know when it’s time to (gracefully) retreat. Oh, and, like Piet, you’ll need complete conviction in your own irresistibility.
See also:
Orgasms, not enough
•
Self-esteem, low
•
Sex, too little
•
Shyness