Cure
Edited by Kristen Couse
Marlowe & Company, 320 pages, $13.95
It’s almost difficult to read more than one story at a time from “Cure,” a remarkable collection edited by Kristen Couse. These chronicles of alcoholism and bulimia, paralyzing accidents and sudden strokes, billed as “healing mind and body stories,” are so excruciatingly detailed that it’s tough to take more than one per sitting, despite varying degrees of hope within each tale.
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Several of the 12 selections are fiction, but most are true accounts by writers who bring the reader along on their painful journey. You can nearly taste the wine and whiskey Caroline Knapp pours down her throat as she describes the struggle to give up drinking (from her book “Drinking: A Love Story”) and the booze-filled weeks leading up to rehab. (Although this excerpt is satisfying, her book is worth exploring in full.)
Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story “The Letter Writer” immerses us in the hazy, pain-filled world of an old man living and dying in New York City. After passing out in his apartment, a woman shows up to take care of him–and save his life. Singer’s magical writing invokes the twilight of illness so well you’ll be reminded of your own worst, cloudy feelings during a feverish flu.
Other writers include Norman Cousins, recounting a puzzling illness that he battled with humor and challenges to conventional medicine; Judith Guest (an excerpt from her book “Ordinary People”); Helen Keller, relating the remarkable effect teacher Annie Sullivan had on her life; and famed neurologist Oliver Sacks, who describes strategies that autistic biologist/engineer Dr. Temple Grandin uses to get through each day.
Although it’s painful to imagine going through any of these experiences–much less writing about them–each tale bears a distinctive flavor and tone that’s well worth examining.