Your Autumn Reading Recommendations
Ella Berthoud, bibliotherapist extraordinaire, offers her book recommendations to get you back to your old routine.
Photo by Alisa Anton on Unsplash
Hello friends,
Today’s post is brought to you by the brilliant Mrs. Ella Berthoud, writer, artist and bibliotherapist extraordinaire who had the courtesy to offer the below list of book recommendations to help us seamlessly adjust to our Autumn routine. So let’s get into our warmer clothes, a cup of hot chocolate in hand, and dig in the wonderful books Ella has lined up for us!
xoxo,
Katerina
As the leaves begin to crisp up and turn their golden colours, and we all start preparing for colder weather and going back to routines of school, work and shorter days, it's a great moment to arm yourself with some good books for the chillier evenings ahead. At this time of year, I love to pick up short books that I can read in an evening. Two of my favourites are Lady into Fox by David Garnett and Mrs Fox by Sarah Hall, both stories of transformations when the woman turns into a fox. David Garnett wrote his short novella a hundred years ago, and it tells the story of a man's wife turning into a fox one day, as they walk in the countryside. He does his best to keep her with him, as she becomes more and more wild, and he still loves her despite everything that happens. The story gets darker as it goes on. Sarah Hall's modern version of this story is equally brilliant and disturbing, as a modern woman becomes more and more foxy, and her boyfriend desperately tries to keep her by his side in a civilized fashion....both tales are great to read at this time of metamorphosis from one state to the other, with the seasons.
Talking of metamorphosis, Monique Roffey's short book Sun Dog is a story about a man who wakes up one day with a strange rash on his arm, that looks like frost - and in fact is frost! August changes with the seasons in strange and intriguing ways, that also reflect on his mental state. By the author of the brilliant The Mermaid of Black Conch, this is another novel to take you by surprise and look for the magic at the edge of experience.
Now moving onto books that are coming out this autumn, Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead is a brilliant exploration of a boy born to a single mother, with a bright orange shock of hair, looking for his path in life. Despite his rather dubious morality, we root for the boy all the way, hoping for his survival, his powerful spirit keeping us desperate for a positive outcome for him after he has been born into such unlucky circumstances.
We are also in for a treat with Maggie O'Farrell's new book, The Marriage Portrait. After her brilliant latest novel Hamnet, about the son of Shakespeare, O Farrell now turns to the Florentine court of the Medicis, and tells a gripping story of murder, death, betrayal and painting - my perfect kind of book! This is a story to grip you and keep you by a cosy fire on a chilly evening as the night draws in, being grateful, I think, to live in a more sympathetic era to women.
Enjoy your autumn reading, and consider booking a bibliotherapy session with Ella Berthoud, when you can talk about your reading loves, likes and dislikes, as well as what is happening in your life, then get a personalised reading prescription to see you through the next few months! If you'd like to book a session with Ella one-to-one, e-mail her on ellaberthoud@gmail.com.
Ella Berthoud started reading on a journey from Tehran to London, on the parcel shelf of a Wolsey 1300 when she was five. She spent the next thirteen years reading books in inappropriate places like ski-lifts and trampolines. She studied English Literature at Cambridge University, where she read as many novels as she could at once. She continued on to University of East London where she studied Fine Art, and combined her twin passions of reading and painting by listening to books while creating works of art. She has worked as an artist in residence at Pentonville Prison, Friends School Saffron Walden and Queenswood School.
Ella first started talking about bibliotherapy with Susan Elderkin when they were at Cambridge together. Over the ensuing years, they prescribed literature to their friends and family, while Ella worked as an artist and Susan wrote her own novels. In 2007 they developed the idea in conjunction with The School of Life into what it is today, a one-to-one service taking place in person, or over the phone. Since then, Ella and Susan have written two books, The Novel Cure: an A-Z of Literary Remedies and The Stoy Cure: How to Keep Children Happy, Healthy and Wise.
Ella lives in West Sussex with her husband and three daughters.
