The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You (66 page)

A Month in the Country

J. L. CARR

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The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

JONAS JONASSON

W
e live only a limited number of days. And the number of days within that precious time span on which something or someone special comes along are few. Hesitate, or lack the courage, to grab what fate has offered, and we may live to regret it forever.

We know of no novel in which the hero—and in a superlative act of osmosis, the reader too—is more haunted by the ache of knowing that he failed to seize the day than J. L. Carr’s eighties classic
A Month
in the Country
. It is the immediate aftermath of World War I, and, carrying with him a terrible stammer and a twitch picked up at Passchendaele, Tom Birkin arrives in the village of Oxgodby in full anticipation of a “marvelous” recuperative summer. He has been contracted to excavate a medieval fresco on the ceiling of the village church, living in the bell chamber while he does it. The experience is every bit as healing as he hopes, for in this “haven of calm” he spends his days in blissful solitude at the top of his ladder, living off bully beef and Mrs. Ellerbeck’s currant tea cakes, making friends with fellow frontline survivor Charles Moon—and falling in love with Alice Keach, the vicar’s lovely young wife.

He doesn’t expect anything to come of it. Alice visits regularly, but so does young Kathy Ellerbeek, and somehow it all seems part and parcel of the gift of the summer that he wishes could go on forever. One day, up in the bell tower, as the two lean together and Tom shows her the meadow where
Charles is digging, her breasts press against him. He knows it’s now or never. What stops him? A certain habit of unhappiness he’s acquired in the last few years, perhaps. English propriety. An assumption he makes about Alice. One leaves this novel a sadder person—unless, of course, you turn it into a commitment never to let the same thing happen to you.

If, like Tom, you have a tendency to be more of a passenger than a pilot in your life, you might need a lesson from the geriatric hero of Jonas Jonasson’s
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
. Allan has always lived his life lightly, with more curiosity than conviction, yet has somehow been instrumental in many of the key events of the twentieth century. On the eve of his one hundredth birthday party in the Malmköping Old People’s Home, to which the press, the mayor, and varied guests have been invited, Allan decides that the home won’t, after all, be his last residence on earth, and that he will die “some other time, in some other place.” He is not only blithe, but lucky—one of the first things he does after escaping is land a suitcase full of money.

What follows is a retrospective romp through Allan’s life, from his birth in 1905 to his new beginnings, at age one hundred and one, in Bali, with a younger woman (eighty-five) at his side. Over the course of his many years, we watch him help create the atom bomb and advise world leaders such as Winston Churchill and Mao Tse-tung. His adventures continue in the present, taking him and his suitcase, via several accidental murders (Allan doesn’t have much cop with morality), to many glorious places.

Jonasson’s message is clear. If you find yourself asking “Should I?” the answer is: “Yes, you should.”

See also:
Apathy
•
Coward, being a
•
Indecision
•
Procrastination
•
Risks, not taking enough

The Shipping News

ANNIE PROULX

•   •   •

A Kestrel for a Knave

BARRY HINES

•   •   •

Rebecca

DAPHNE DU MAURIER

I
t’s not surprising that Quoyle, the hero of
The Shipping News
, has low self-esteem. He spends his childhood being told he’s a failure by his dad, his favored older brother Dick beats him up, he’s fat and has a freakishly enormous chin, his wife can’t stand him and sleeps around, he’s underpaid by his employers, his parents get cancer and
kill themselves, his wife leaves him and takes their two daughters (who, by the way, are named Bunny and Sunshine, which can’t help), he gets the sack, his wife is killed in a car crash—oh, hang on, maybe that’s a positive bit. Anyway, you get the gist. Number of reasons to feel good about himself by the end of the first few chapters (yes, this all happens at the beginning): frankly, zero.

And so, “brimming with grief and thwarted love,” Quoyle decides to follow his aunt’s advice and start a new life in the somewhat unpromising environs of Newfoundland, where his father was born. This he does, with the aunt and two requisitioned, delinquent daughters in tow, and what follows is surely one of the most remarkable comebacks in literature. Those low in self-esteem should read this novel not just as a literary and curative experience in and of itself, but as a how-to manual. Do as Quoyle does, step-by-step. If you do not possess the relevant passport or visa requirements to live in Newfoundland, substitute with another inhospitable and inaccessible location, such as Iceland, the Outer Hebrides, or Northern Siberia. After acquiring a generous life insurance policy, arrange for the death in a car crash of the partner who torments you and—

Just kidding. But we do suggest that you at least go and stay for a while in the place your family comes from, however much you hate it, or them. While you’re there, research your ancestors. You may, like Quoyle, uncover less than pretty facts about your lousy forebears—the crimes and wounds that, passed down from one generation to another, brought down your own self-esteem in the first place. With luck you’ll be able to break the hereditary cycle, as Quoyle does, and move on.

Of course, it’s not always the fault of dead relatives. Sometimes it’s the fault of relatives who are still, unfortunately, alive. In what remains one of the most devastating social critiques of its generation,
A Kestrel for a Knave
(1968) by Barry Hines shines an unflinching light on the way a community can demoralize and stunt a youthful spirit by depriving him of love, trust, stability, encouragement, and praise. Not to mention breakfast.

Growing up in a bleak, depressed Yorkshire mining town, Billy has to fight his elder brother, Jud, for everything from space in the bed to their mother’s scant affection. No one sees any promise in him—except Mr. Farthing at school, who hears Billy talk about the kestrel—a type of falcon—he keeps in the garden shed. Through Kes, Billy discovers a quality that no one else has shown him, for the beautiful wild bird “just seems proud to be itself.” Kes means everything to Billy, and when he takes the bird out to fly it—using a lure to control its sweeps and loops, watching it eat a sparrow,
receiving its weight on his gauntlet when it lands—Billy becomes transformed from a boy with no future except to go “down the pit” like his brother into an eloquent, confident lad full of promise and passion.

The lesson for those needing to escape their limitations is to find your own kestrel equivalent—it doesn’t matter what you are an expert in, just so long as you can cultivate a passion that will build your self-esteem and, hopefully, draw the attention of others who will help you build a better life.

Sometimes, of course, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself. If you subject yourself to constant criticism, undermining your belief in yourself and your own opinions, you’ll recognize a kindred spirit in the nameless narrator of Daphne du Maurier’s
Rebecca
. From the minute she assumes her role as the second Mrs. de Winter, mistress of Manderley—the beautiful country estate owned by her older and more sophisticated husband, Maxim—she becomes gauche in the extreme, forever dropping her gloves, knocking over glasses, and stepping on dogs, blushing and apologizing as she tiptoes around, biting her nails and wondering whether she’s being laughed at by the servants. Inadequately dressed and coiffed—and knowing it—she is clueless as to how to run a country estate and does nothing to help herself learn. She naively hands over her authority to the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, a spiteful specter of a woman who “adored” the first Mrs. de Winter and is only too happy to encourage the young woman’s self-sabotage. “Second-rate,” “odd,” “unsatisfactory”—these are all ways in which, directly or indirectly, she describes herself. When Mrs. Danvers suggests she throw herself from the bedroom window, she very nearly agrees to do it.

Watching Mrs. de Winter put herself down and compare herself unfavorably to the elegant, clever, beautiful Rebecca, her husband’s first wife, becomes hard to stomach after a while. If you’re similarly self-critical, you’ll blush in guilty recognition as you read, and swear to put an end to such self-destructive behavior once and for all.

See also:
Failure, feeling like a
•
Neediness
•
Shyness

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

KEN KESEY