We are a writing team of doctor and dramatist, two long-time friends who have made our life’s work over the last 30 years the exploration of empathy, with her forensic patients in Gwen’s case, and for Eileen, through the invention of characters in dramas. Our shared passion, as our five book choices reveal, is to offer hope through the healing power of narrative; as Carl Jung said, "the reason for evil in the world is that people are unable to tell their stories."
One of several Lamott non-fiction works that we love, you’ll return to this slim volume many times over for a witty, warming shot of wisdom. With a familiar mix of the philosophical, autobiographical, and anecdotal, Lamott provides a refreshing perspective on coping with hopelessness and suffering, both private and public. For Lamott, meaning comes from ‘living stitch by stitch' and protects us from being overwhelmed by the world’s problems (or our own). Through hard topics including her own addiction and losses, the author testifies to the power of hope and community. Like a therapist or forensic psychiatrist, Lamott talks of the import of bearing witness to the suffering of others, as a path to change.
What do we do when life lurches out of balance? How can we reconnect to one another and to what's sustaining, when evil and catastrophe seem inescapable?
These questions lie at the heart of Stitches, Anne Lamott's follow-up to her New York Times-bestselling work, Help, Thanks, Wow. In this book, she explores how we find meaning and peace in these loud and frantic times; where we start again after personal and public devastation; how we recapture wholeness after loss; and how we locate our true identities in this frazzled age. We begin, Lamott says, by collecting the ripped sheets of…
Despite a very different voice and style, this work mirrors Lamott’s messaging. Perhaps more familiar as the author of the Narnia books, here Jack Lewis offers a devil’s view of how humans get tempted to evil. The book is made up of imaginary letters from a senior devil Screwtape to a junior and incompetent. This book is as witty as it is truthful; particularly about how much suffering arises from self-deception. And we highly recommend listening to the audio version perfectly read by John Cleese!
On its first appearance, The Screwtape Letters was immediately recognized as a milestone in the history of popular theology. Now, in it's 70th Anniversary Year, and having sold over half a million copies, it is an iconic classic on spiritual warfare and the power of the devil.
This profound and striking narrative takes the form of a series of letters from Screwtape, a devil high in the Infernal Civil Service, to his nephew Wormwood, a junior colleague engaged in his first mission on earth trying to secure the damnation of a young man who has just become a Christian. Although…
Do you freeze up when your characters drift into the bedroom? Are you puzzled about how much to say and how to say it? What to call the body parts that bring us so much pleasure and so much anguish?
If you’re writing a novel and there’s a sexual encounter…
Patchett is a sublime novelist, but this work of memoir is unbeatable, one of those books you find yourself gifting to friends and family as soon as you’ve finished it. Written soon after her dear friend, the poet Lucy Grealy, died too young, this is an account of their deep friendship over two decades. Though they had much in common, the story as it unfolds demonstrates how it is possible for two people to grapple with creative struggles and trauma very differently. We also felt Patchett captured some essential qualities of female friendship, so that we see Lucy through Ann’s eyes, and makes us also Lucy’s friends.
From the bestselling author of The Dutch House, Commonwealth and Bel Canto, Winner of The Women's Prize for Fiction and the Pen/Faulkner Award.
When Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy met in college they began a friendship that would define their lives. Lucy Grealy lost part of her jaw to childhood cancer, and a large part of her life to chemotherapy and endless reconstructive surgeries. Stoic but vulnerable, damaged by bullying but fascinated by fame, Lucy had an incandescent personality that illuminated those around her.
In this tender, brutal book, Ann Patchett describes Lucy's life and her own platonic love for…
This is another book about creativity, trauma, and the healing power of writing, but this time, the subjects are men. In this work of historical fiction, Barker explores the real experiences of the war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and their psychotherapist WH Rivers. Barker gives us a nuanced look at male love and friendship within her exploration of a doctor working on the treatment of trauma, then described as ‘shell shock’ (today known as PTSD).
"Calls to mind such early moderns as Hemingway and Fitzgerald...Some of the most powerful antiwar literature in modern English fiction."-The Boston Globe
The first book of the Regeneration Trilogy-a Booker Prize nominee and one of Entertainment Weekly's 100 All-Time Greatest Novels.
In 1917 Siegfried Sasson, noted poet and decorated war hero, publicly refused to continue serving as a British officer in World War I. His reason: the war was a senseless slaughter. He was officially classified "mentally unsound" and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital. There a brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. William Rivers, set about restoring Sassoon's "sanity" and sending him back…
Do you freeze up when your characters drift into the bedroom? Are you puzzled about how much to say and how to say it? What to call the body parts that bring us so much pleasure and so much anguish?
If you’re writing a novel and there’s a sexual encounter…
The ultimate book about spiritual survival, written by concentration camp survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. They say this book was written in nine days, and you’ll read it in one sitting; more than a story of the horrors of daily life in Auschwitz, this is a handbook for dealing with every kind of despair. Gwen has applied Frankl’s insights in her forensic practice to help offenders discover meaning in the harm they’ve done to themselves and their victims and seen how doing so can transform mental anguish into finding some purpose in life, a freedom we all have – even someone serving a life sentence in prison. Frankl’s life-changing message is that ‘those who have a why to live can bear almost any how.’
One of the outstanding classics to emerge from the Holocaust, Man's Search for Meaning is Viktor Frankl's story of his struggle for survival in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Today, this remarkable tribute to hope offers us an avenue to finding greater meaning and purpose in our own lives.
Dr. Gwen Adshead is one of Britain's leading forensic psychiatrists. She treats serial killers, arsonists, stalkers, gang members, and other individuals who are usually labelled 'monsters.' Whatever their crime, she listens to their stories and helps them to better understand their terrible acts of violence. Here Adshead invites the reader to step with her into the room to meet twelve patients and discover how minds can change. These men and women are revealed in all their complexity and shared humanity. Their stories make a powerful case for rehabilitation over revenge, compassion over condemnation. The Devil You Know will challenge everything you thought you knew about human nature.
