Read Online The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You by Ella Berthoud, Susan Elderkin - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ella Berthoud, Susan Elderkin
Ads: Link
great relief in Franny’s description of her torment. Luckily, readers adore characters like the Glass siblings for the very traits for which their peers dislike them, and the exceptionally brainy should take some comfort from this.
If, like Franny and Zooey, your cleverness has cut you off from the world, it’s vital not to hate the world for it (see: Bitterness). Franny and Zooey eventually find a way out of their disaffection via an epiphany that allows them to see God in everyone. You may prefer to leave God out of it; the invocation really is just to love others. This charming novella will fill you with a sense of solidarity and replenish your tank of love whenever it threatens to run dry.
See also:
Different, being
BREAKING UP
High Fidelity
NICK HORNBY
A s the songs say, breaking up is hard to do. And whether you’re the dumper or the dumped, you should never go through it alone. Ideally, you need your hand held by a friend who has also been battered and bruised by relationship bust-ups and knows how it feels (for more of which, see: Broken heart). We offer you the hand of Rob, the music-mad hero of Nick Hornby’s paean to pop,
High Fidelity
. In our list of all-time best breakup novels (see below), this holds the number one spot. For though the vinyl may have dated, the experience, the emotions, the lessons, and the truths have not.
In order to make sense of his latest breakup—with live-in girlfriend Laura—Rob revisits his all-time top five most memorable splits, from the “first chuck” inflicted by twelve-year-old Alison Ashworth (who, for reasons that remain as unfathomable as they were then, decided to snog Kevin Bannister after school instead of him) to the humiliation of Charlie Nicholson upgrading to someone called Marco. Every page jangles with bells of recognition: who hasn’t experienced the initial wave of tentative optimism—part liberation, part nervous excitement—that washes over you in the immediate aftermath of a breakup, only to have it wiped out by a crushing sense of loss the minute it hits you that she or he is not coming back? And who hasn’t wondered which comes first—the music or the misery—as heartache plays out to the accompaniment of “Love Hurts” or “Walk on By”?
One of the hard truths Rob learns is that breakups do not get easier the more we go through. “It would be nice to think that as I’ve got older times have changed, relationships have become more sophisticated, females less cruel, skins thicker, reactions sharper, instincts more developed . . . ,” bemoans thirty-five-year-old Rob. And yet, with some help from Hornby, one can try to do it a bit better than the time before. The main lesson for Rob is one of commitment (see: Commitment, fear of), but as you watch him pick through the shards of his broken loves, you’ll soon know which lessons are meant expressly for you. Are you the sort, like the twentysomething Rob, to react to your bust-ups by flunking college and going to work in a record shop (or today’s equivalent)? Do you beat yourself up, like the older Rob, for being a rejection magnet, when, in fact, you’ve left your own fair share of broken hearts in your wake? The wisdom of this novel may be froma decidedly masculine point of view, but there are patterns here that will map onto almost any breakup and that you can use to help recognize the part you played. Girls will do well to remind themselves that boys cry into their pillows too. And the spurned may get a kick from the fortysomething woman who tries to flog her husband’s priceless record collection for fifty pounds because he’s run off to Spain with a twenty-three-year-old friend of her daughter’s. (Before you get any similar ideas, note Rob’s impressively disciplined response and see: Vengeance, seeking.)
Read
High Fidelity
and allow your heart to absorb the lessons from Rob’s—and your own—past mistakes. Are you going for the wrong sort of guys/girls? Are you
If, like Franny and Zooey, your cleverness has cut you off from the world, it’s vital not to hate the world for it (see: Bitterness). Franny and Zooey eventually find a way out of their disaffection via an epiphany that allows them to see God in everyone. You may prefer to leave God out of it; the invocation really is just to love others. This charming novella will fill you with a sense of solidarity and replenish your tank of love whenever it threatens to run dry.
See also:
Different, being
BREAKING UP
High Fidelity
NICK HORNBY
A s the songs say, breaking up is hard to do. And whether you’re the dumper or the dumped, you should never go through it alone. Ideally, you need your hand held by a friend who has also been battered and bruised by relationship bust-ups and knows how it feels (for more of which, see: Broken heart). We offer you the hand of Rob, the music-mad hero of Nick Hornby’s paean to pop,
High Fidelity
. In our list of all-time best breakup novels (see below), this holds the number one spot. For though the vinyl may have dated, the experience, the emotions, the lessons, and the truths have not.
In order to make sense of his latest breakup—with live-in girlfriend Laura—Rob revisits his all-time top five most memorable splits, from the “first chuck” inflicted by twelve-year-old Alison Ashworth (who, for reasons that remain as unfathomable as they were then, decided to snog Kevin Bannister after school instead of him) to the humiliation of Charlie Nicholson upgrading to someone called Marco. Every page jangles with bells of recognition: who hasn’t experienced the initial wave of tentative optimism—part liberation, part nervous excitement—that washes over you in the immediate aftermath of a breakup, only to have it wiped out by a crushing sense of loss the minute it hits you that she or he is not coming back? And who hasn’t wondered which comes first—the music or the misery—as heartache plays out to the accompaniment of “Love Hurts” or “Walk on By”?
One of the hard truths Rob learns is that breakups do not get easier the more we go through. “It would be nice to think that as I’ve got older times have changed, relationships have become more sophisticated, females less cruel, skins thicker, reactions sharper, instincts more developed . . . ,” bemoans thirty-five-year-old Rob. And yet, with some help from Hornby, one can try to do it a bit better than the time before. The main lesson for Rob is one of commitment (see: Commitment, fear of), but as you watch him pick through the shards of his broken loves, you’ll soon know which lessons are meant expressly for you. Are you the sort, like the twentysomething Rob, to react to your bust-ups by flunking college and going to work in a record shop (or today’s equivalent)? Do you beat yourself up, like the older Rob, for being a rejection magnet, when, in fact, you’ve left your own fair share of broken hearts in your wake? The wisdom of this novel may be froma decidedly masculine point of view, but there are patterns here that will map onto almost any breakup and that you can use to help recognize the part you played. Girls will do well to remind themselves that boys cry into their pillows too. And the spurned may get a kick from the fortysomething woman who tries to flog her husband’s priceless record collection for fifty pounds because he’s run off to Spain with a twenty-three-year-old friend of her daughter’s. (Before you get any similar ideas, note Rob’s impressively disciplined response and see: Vengeance, seeking.)
Read
High Fidelity
and allow your heart to absorb the lessons from Rob’s—and your own—past mistakes. Are you going for the wrong sort of guys/girls? Are you
Similar Books
