The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You (85 page)

She
(H. Rider Haggard),
70

The Sheltering Sky
(Paul Bowles),
218

Shine Shine Shine
(Lydia Netzer),
34

The Shining
(Stephen King),
16

The Shipping News
(Annie Proulx),
327

Sho-gun
(James Clavell),
376

Shoplifting from American Apparel
(Tao Lin),
112

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
(Marina Lewycka),
10

The Sickness
(Alberto Barrera Tyszka),
61

Siddhartha
(Hermann Hesse),
24

Silas Marner
(George Eliot),
344

Silk
(Alessandro Baricco),
397

A Simple Heart
(Gustave Flaubert),
64

Sister Carrie
(Theodore Dreiser),
199

The Sisters Brothers
(Patrick DeWitt),
64

The Skeleton in the Cupboard
(Alice Thomas Ellis),
278

Skellig
(David Almond),
184

Skin Tight
(Carl Hiaasen),
320

Skios
(Michael Frayn),
376

Slaughterhouse-Five
(Kurt Vonnegut),
364

The Sleepwalkers
(Hermann Broch),
347

The Sly Company of People Who Care
(Rahul Bhattacharya),
386

Small Gods
(Terry Pratchett),
261

Small Island
(Andrea Levy),
376

Snow
(Maxence Fermine),
177

The Snow Child
(Eowyn Ivey),
360

Snow Country
(Yasunari Kawabata),
386

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
(Lisa See),
376

So Long, See You Tomorrow
(William Maxwell),
159

Some Hope
(Edward St. Aubyn),
108

Something Wicked This Way Comes
(Ray Bradbury),
123

Sophie’s Choice
(William Styron),
91

The Sorrows of Young Werther
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe),
230

The Sound of One Hand Clapping
(Richard Flanagan),
343

South Riding
(Winifred Holtby),
103

The Spare Room
(Helen Garner),
61

Special Topics in Calamity
Physics
(Marisha Pessl),
294

Spending
(Mary Gordon),
153

The Spire
(William Golding),
308

The Sportswriter
(Richard Ford),
119

Stamboul Train
(Graham Greene),
67

The Stand
(Stephen King),
368

The Stars My Destination
(Alfred Bester),
383

State of Wonder
(Ann Patchett),
334

The Stepford Wives
(Ira Levin),
186

Still Life with Woodpecker
(Tom Robbins),
348

The Stone Angel
(Margaret Laurence),
269

The Stone Diaries
(Carol Shields),
153

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
(David Wroblewski),
291

The Story of Lucy Gault
(William Styron),
91

The Story of O
(Pauline Réage),
283

Straight Man
(Richard Russo),
189

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(Robert Louis Stevenson),
380

The Stranger
(Albert Camus),
134
,
372

Strangers on a Train
(Patricia Highsmith),
67

Stuck Rubber Baby
(Howard Cruse),
77

A Study in Scarlet
(Arthur Conan Doyle),
76

The Successor
(Ismail Kadare),
113

A Suitable Boy
(Vikram Seth),
146
,
368

The Summer Before the Dark
(Doris Lessing),
243

The Summer Without
Men
(Siri Hustvedt),
7

The Sun Also Rises
(Ernest Hemingway),
366

Sun Dog
(Monique Roffey),
34

Super Sad True Love Story
(Gary Shteyngart),
237

Surfacing
(Margaret Atwood),
235

The Swimming Pool Library
(Alan Hollinghurst),
284

Tales of the City
(Armistead Maupin),
223

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
(Anne Brontë),
366

Tender Is the Night
(F. Scott Fitzgerald),
318
,
338

The Tenderness of Wolves
(Stef Penney),
153

The Ten-Year Nap
(Meg Wolitzer),
186

Tess of the d’Urbervilles
(Thomas Hardy),
91

Their Eyes Were Watching God
(Zora Neale Hurston),
119

There but for the
(Ali Smith),
115

Thérèse Raquin
(Émile Zola),
261

These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine
(Nancy Turner),
306

Things Fall Apart
(Chinua Achebe),
345

The Third Policeman
(Flann O’Brien),
221

This Book Will Save Your Life
(A. M. Homes),
359

This Is How You Lose Her
(Junot Díaz),
46

This Is Your Life
(Meg Wolitzer),
58

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
(David Mitchell),
334

A Thousand Splendid Suns
(Khaled Hosseini),
273

Three Men in a Boat
(Jerome K. Jerome),
269

Through the Looking-Glass
(Lewis Carroll),
269

The Tiger’s
Wife
(Téa Obreht),
321

The Time Traveler’s Wife
(Audrey Niffenegger),
247

The Tin Drum
(Günter Grass),
339

Tinkers
(Paul Harding),
64

Tipping the Velvet
(Sarah Waters),
376

To Kill a Mockingbird
(Harper Lee),
344
,
364

Tom Brown’s School
Days
(Thomas Hughes),
55

Tom Jones
(Henry Fielding),
188

To the End of the Land
(David Grossman),
273

To the Lighthouse
(Virginia Woolf),
108

To the Wedding
(John Berger),
64

The Towers of Trebizond
(Rose Macaulay),
357

A Town Like Alice
(Nevil Shute),
290

The Train
(Georges Simenon),
67

Train Dreams
(Denis Johnson),
64

Trainspotting
(Irvine Welsh),
124

The Transit of Venus
(Shirley Hazzard),
387

True
Grit
(Charles Portis),
265

True History of the Kelly Gang
(Peter Carey),
2

Ulysses
(James Joyce),
270
,
282
,
350

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
(Milan Kundera),
104
,
108

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones
(Alexander McCall Smith),
294

Uncle Tom’s Cabin
(Harriet Beecher Stowe),
43

Under the Greenwood Tree
(Thomas Hardy),
392

Under the Skin
(Michel Faber),
66

Under the Volcano
(Malcolm Lowry),
16

Union Atlantic
(Adam Haslett),
166

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
(Rachel Joyce),
143
,
345

Utz
(Bruce Chatwin),
48

Vanity Fair
(William Makepeace Thackeray),
350
,
368

Venus in Furs
(Leopold von Sacher-Masoch),
208
,
386

The Vintner’s Luck
(Elizabeth Knox),
185

The Virgin Suicides
(Jeffrey Eugenides),
294

A Visit from the Goon Squad
(Jennifer Egan),
273

Voss
(Patrick White),
389

Waiting
(Ha Jin),
255

Wait Until Spring, Bandini
(John Fante),
320

Wake Up, Sir!
(Jonathan Ames),
107

Waltenberg
(Hédi Kaddour),
395

War and Peace
(Leo Tolstoy),
368
,
389

The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts
(Louis de Bernières),
185

The War of the Worlds
(H. G. Wells),
323

The Wasp Factory
(Iain Banks),
272

Waterland
(Graham Swift),
70
,
269

The Waves
(Virginia Woolf),
180

The Way of All Flesh
(Samuel Butler),
87

We Have Always Lived in the Castle
(Shirley Jackson),
25

We Need to Talk About Kevin
(Lionel Shriver),
72

What I Loved
(Siri Hustvedt),
98

The Wheel Spins
(Ethel Lina White),
67

Where Angels Fear to Tread
(E. M. Forster),
354

Where’d You Go, Bernadette
(Maria Semple),
189

The White
Hotel
(D. M. Thomas),
179

White Lightning
(Justin Cartwright),
153

White Noise
(Don DeLillo),
96

White Teeth
(Zadie Smith),
273

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?
(Lorrie Moore),
4

Why Did I Ever
(Mary Robison),
112

Wide Sargasso Sea
(Jean Rhys),
376

The Widow’s Tale
(Mick Jackson),
390

The Wind in the Willows
(Kenneth Grahame),
269

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
(Haruki Murakami),
373

The Wings of the Dove
(Henry James),
350

A Wizard of Earthsea
(Ursula K. Le Guin),
261

Wolf
Hall
(Hilary Mantel),
270

Wolf Solent
(John Cowper Powys),
202

The Woman and the Ape
(Peter Høeg),
185

The Woman in Black
(Susan Hill),
157
,
175

The Woman in the Dunes
(Kobo Abe),
15

The Woman in White
(Wilkie Collins),
222

The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year
(Sue Townsend),
135

Women
(Charles Bukowski),
335

Women in a River Landscape
(Heinrich Böll),
112

The World According to Garp
(John Irving),
350

World’s Fair
(E. L. Doctorow),
132

A Wrinkle in Time
(Madeleine L’Engle),
323

Wuthering Heights
(Emily Brontë),
46
,
378
,
389

The Year of the Flood
(Margaret Atwood),
323

The Year of the Hare
(Arto Paasilinna),
245

Young Hearts Crying
(Richard Yates),
47
,
153

Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto
(Maile Chapman),
180

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
(Robert M. Pirsig),
313

Zoo
City
(Lauren Beukes),
261

Zorba the Greek
(Nikos Kazantzakis),
136

Zuleika Dobson
(Max Beerbohm),
93

*
As P. J. O’Rourke said, “Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.”

*
Novels are not the only culprit, however: she knows by heart all the love songs “of the last century,” glories in the heady rites and rituals of the Catholic Church, and likes the countryside only when it involves ruins—the responsibility for which we lay squarely at the foot of eighteenth-century Romantic art.

*
(1) Trauma, including abuse, or death of a loved one; (2) relationship problems, either at home or at work; (3) work/school; (4) finances; (5) natural disaster; (6) lack of oxygen at high altitude; (7) taking life too seriously; (8) gnawing feeling that you should have read more of the classics; (9) negative self-talk; (10) poor health/hypochondria; (11) taking too many drugs; (12) being late/too busy; (13) inadequate food, water, heat, or comfort; (14) threat of attack by wild animal/person.