A novel approach

I’m supposed to be interviewing Ella Berthoud but so far she’s the one asking all the questions.

Berthoud is a bibliotherapist, someone who firmly believes books can change your life and who dispenses personalised “fiction prescriptions” to those in need of solace or encouragement.

As we sit in her curious, colourful sitting room in Hurstpierpoint, she probes me about my literary tastes (politely summarised as “eclectic”), reading habits (stop-start) pet hates (misery lit, crime) and bad habits (abandoning books that don’t immediately grab me).

Berthoud believes a person’s reading says a lot about them and I’ll admit I feel a little exposed as I reveal my patchy knowledge of Russian classics and fondness for short stories by American humourists. As I slyly scan Berthoud’s own bookshelves for clues (overflowing, varied, hard to categorise) she recommends a few immediate changes I might want to make, including – oh no – alphabetising my books. It’s satisfying, she insists, and helps sort the wheat from the chaff.

“Get rid of books you know you’ll never read, or you’ll never read again, or you have duplicates of, and make a ‘favourites’ shelf of those you love. That’s very comforting.

It’ll also help you see what you’ve loved and might want to read more of, or where there are gaps you’d like to address.”

She urges me to try audiobooks as a means of absorbing novels I might otherwise give up on – “It’s a very different experience listening to a book”

– and to try reading aloud with my partner to make a book a shared experience.

Most of the names she mentions for my future reading are unfamiliar to me, but I’m intrigued by her reasons for recommending them. She thinks Keri Smith’s interactive books might appeal to my neglected creative side and writes out an immediate “prescription” for Tim Winton’s Breath, whose themes of ambition and challenge will, she thinks, help galvanise me into making some of the big changes we’ve discussed.

The session is – excuse the pun – an entirely novel experience and I can’t deny that I enjoy the attention. But isn’t bibliotherapy just a glorified version of something good bookshops have long dispensed for free? Can’t we get the same recommendations from our friends?

Berthoud agrees to an extent.

“But even in the best book shops, you might only get ten minutes from the person behind the counter and they won’t know a great deal about you or your past.”

Besides, she points out, how many times has a friend recommended a book they have adored which leaves you totally cold? Bibliotherapy is specifically tailored to an individual and to their life as it stands. Many clients are dealing with divorce, or bereavement, or their first child and want advice on what they might read to help them through a turbulent time. We don’t always turn to the most useful books when under stress and Berthoud sees a lot of highfliers who only read trashy thrillers, desperate for the easy escapism they offer.

“If it works for them, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing but there are other books they might read that would offer more substantial, stimulating escapism.”

Other clients simply want reading tips that go beyond Amazon’s automated suggestions.

A man in New York speaks to Berthoud over Skype every two months simply to talk about what he’s read, what he loved and what she thinks he might enjoy next.

Understandably, Berthoud reads a lot. She studied English at Cambridge before going on to a degree in fine art, when, as now, she combined her twin passions by listening to books while painting. She first started talking about bibliotherapy at Cambridge with her friend, the novelist Susan Elderkin. But it wasn’t until 2007 that their idea finally took shape when they were encouraged to launch sessions at Alain de Botton’s School Of Life in London.

The idea took off fairly swiftly and Berthoud and Elderkin were joined by Simona Lyons, who spent ten years running an independent bookshop in north London.

The three bibliotherapists have just finished work on The Novel Cure, a reading list for all life’s ills, which will come out in September.

Although the therapy part of the equation is “light – more in the vein of aromatherapy or massage than anything approaching psychotherapy” – all three women are convinced that books have the power to change lives for the better.

“You spend so much time with a book and if you’re reading something you’re captivated by, your whole interior landscape is dominated by it. So if you need something therapeutic in your life, you need to get it right. Pick up the wrong book and you might feel even more depressed and hopeless.

Pick up the right book and it could turn you around.”

Berthoud lists Hubert Selby Jnr’s Requiem For A Dream as one example of a book that had such an effect on her own life. “It’s incredibly bleak but really affected me deeply because it was so much about failure and not going the right way to pursue your dreams and coming to grief as a result.

It convinced me that I had to do the things I wanted to do.”

Of course, bibilotherapy is only as good as the therapist’s own reading but between the three women, Berthoud thinks they have a pretty broad repertoire to choose from. She’s certainly no snob about her subject, as likely to recommend Jilly Cooper – who she describes as “the literary equivalent of a hot chocolate” as Dostoevsky.

Her personal “favourites”

shelf includes Tove Jansson’s Moomintroll books. “I just love them and I always come back to them.”

All books have a time and a place – it’s just working out which we need when, she says.

Certain titles come up again and again, however. Tom Robbin’s hefty Jitterbug Perfume, for example, whose broad-reaching take on love, life, immortality and religion seems to offer a kind of universal salve. “It’s really fun and uplifting and seems to work for a lot of people for a lot of different reasons – actually, you should read it!”

Whether reading the “right” literature can turn my life around remains to be seen, but I eagerly anticipate the tailored book list Berthoud says she’ll send me after our session and faithfully promise to start keeping a log of the books I’ve read and loved to counteract my forgetful tendencies. Who knows, I might even alphabetise my bookshelves one of these days.

* Find out more about Ella Berthoud’s bibliotherapy by visiting www.ellaberthoud.com Photos by Terry Applin or www.theschooloflife.com