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RECOVERING FROM ILLNESS
THE bestselling author suggests key novels to help you through the trickier times in life.
BEFORE the blessings of inoculation and penicillin, the business of convalescence played a regular part in the rhythm of life.
Days spent languishing on a sofa drinking horrible-sounding broth or being banished to a strange relative’s fresher air are common occurrences for the heroes of children’s classics. Indeed, it’s where the fun starts. They’d never have had any adventures if they’d had an MMR jab.
We recover from most things more quickly now. That recovery is so managed as to keep us in our homes and within the perimeters of our lives, and for that we must be thankful.
Just because convalescence was more of a business in the past, it doesn’t mean we were better at it. Pat Barker’s searing Regeneration is set in a Scottish hospital during World War I. The soldiers here are suffering from the devastating psychiatric effects of the war. Whether these men can be properly cured at all is questionable.
And if they do return to health, then should they return to the war? Psychiatry itself is still in its infancy, but it’s up to these doctors to decide.
Nicholas Evans’s The Horse Whisperer also deals with recovery from trauma, but takes a modern shape. Grace and her horse, Pilgrim, survive a tragic accident — the girl is injured and withdrawn, and the horse uncontrollable.
All advise that Pilgrim should be put down. Instead, Grace’s mother takes them both to a ranch in Montana, and to Tom, who has a sixth sense with animals. And as he works his magic on the horse, Grace comes back to life, too.
Convalescence is a struggle, but it can also be a period for thought and, if you’re lucky, companionship. In Elizabeth Strout’s wonderful My Name Is Lucy Barton, Lucy is stuck in hospital for several weeks.
Her childhood was one of emotional deprivation. But here she is, an adult, and for one glorious week she has her mother to herself. And she loves it: ‘I was so happy. Oh, I was happy speaking with my mother this way!’