Re-reading favourite novels can also provide a particular kind of bibliotherapy – allowing one to take stock of oneself from an illuminating vantage point. Berthoud discussed how she had an ongoing relationship with Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles of this type. “The first time I read it, when I was 15, I really identified with Tess, and the second time, 10 years later, I found I was really stressed out with how passive she was – and then I read it another 10 years later and began to understand some of her decisions again. There’s something about going back time and time again to a book over your life which is incredibly rewarding – you get to know yourself better because you visit the layers of yourself that you’ve had over the years like an onion.”
Thinking of younger readers, fiction can also play a significant role in tackling the youth mental health crisis that is increasingly part of the global conversation. Escapism is one thing, but conversely there are now more and more young adult novels which can help teenagers by addressing head-on the issues they may be dealing with in their day-to-day lives, from bullying to drugs to transgender issues and social exclusion. Berthoud mentioned novelists like Juno Dawson, Melvin Burgess and Malorie Blackman among those who may be most helpful in getting kids to talk about “the issues which might be happening in their lives, but they haven’t been able to articulate. I really think that a book can be the axe that breaks the frozen sea within us, as Kafka said, and that is true of any age.”
Is writing good for the soul too?
But while reading has undoubted psychological benefits, what about writing? Wheatle and Burton admitted that the life of a writer can be a mixed bag, mental health-wise. On one hand, as Wheatle suggested about his writing on his experiences in care, it can be a brilliant way to process, and empty out, emotional trauma. And on the other, as Burton said, “the actual act of writing is hugely isolating and you are alone for weeks, months, years on end, going a bit loopy. I used to be an actress, which was a collaborative experience, and I deeply miss [that aspect] … the paradox is your book gets read by thousands of people but you’re not there to witness that – you don’t do that in concert – so it’s very strange.”
