THIS TOO SHALL PASS
STORIES OF CHANGE, CRISIS AND HOPEFUL BEGINNINGS
JULIA SAMUEL Penguin Life, 336pp, £14.99
No one who reviewed this book had a bad word to say about it, and everyone was full of admiration for its author, the seasoned psychotherapist Julia Samuel, whose previous book on bereavement, Grief Works, had won similar widespread praise. This follow-up, wrote Kate Saunders in the Times, ‘looks at the smaller, but no less important changes that so many of us will face whether we like it or not — divorce, redundancy, sexual confusion or plain old disappointment’. Georgia Beaufort told us in the Telegraph that ‘Samuel draws on her own patients’ stories, dividing them into themes: family relationships, love, work, health and identity – and reflecting at the end of each chapter on the issues raised.’
‘The case studies here are presented so well that they often read like good fiction,’ said Saunders. These range from the seemingly trite (a rich Indian woman furious that her younger daughter refuses to have a showy, expensive wedding) to, in Mia Levitin’s words in the Guardian, ‘the most heart-wrenching case of Ben, a widowed father of two who has just started to adjust to his bereavement when he receives a life-threatening cancer diagnosis’. Samuel, she goes on, does not consider therapy a cure-all: she concedes that what Ben needs in this instance is ‘not counselling but a turn of luck’. ‘There are all kinds of lessons to be learnt from this wise, kindly book,’ wrote Saunders, a sentiment clearly shared by Beaufort, when she concluded that ‘It would be hard for anyone reading it not to find a person or scenario that did not resonate in some way.’ It is Samuel’s presence throughout, she went on, ‘that makes This Too Shall Pass more effective and readable than the multitude of popular self-help bibles’.
Samuel’s advice, Levitin deduced, is that ‘the key to resilience is the quality of our relationships: family and friends can buoy us in turbulent times’.’ If there is a message in this book, wrote Saunders, it is ‘that life changes and these changes often hurt. Samuel is not peddling any magic solutions, but she has a basic faith in human decency, and her optimism shines through every sentence.’