100 books like Us

Until I read In the Dream House, I thought books had rules. Carmen Maria Machado expanded my understanding of storytelling with her intensely poetic, genre-bending memoir about enduring an abusive queer relationship while having no language for what was happening to her.

I was moved, shocked, tickled, uplifted, and moved again in rapid succession. Her diction shifts from colloquial to epic and back again at a speed that took my breath away but always brought me along for the ride. I wanted to hold this book’s tiny chapters under a microscope to better appreciate all the intricate beauty packed inside.

Some books are fascinating character studies. Others are riveting stories. When Rabbit Howls is somehow both.

Narrated by a woman’s alters (The Troops for Trudi Chase), this book really goes the extra mile in terms of forcing the reader to feel the lifetime impact of abuse both through the story being told, and the way that story is written on the page. I won’t spoil anything here, but it includes a brilliant, metafictional ending that has lingered with me for years now like a punch to the solar plexus.

This novel is an incredible feat of writing “from the inside” of a character.

Teenager Tracey Berkowitz narrates her story as she looks for her missing brother, who thinks he’s a dog, but she is absolutely not a reliable narrator. I was lucky enough to have Maureen as a mentor, but for everything she taught me, this book somehow manages to say even more.

A fascinating psychological portrait. There is so much cold, brutal poetry in its pages.

Paul Lynch was recently announced as the (very deserving) winner of the Booker Prize, but I’ve been a fan of his ever since his spectacular novel about the Ireland’s Great Famine, Grace.

How do you capture trauma on a national level? Of course, you embody it in the personal, and I was in constant awe of Lynch’s immediate, visceral sentences, and their ability to force me to embody Grace’s experience living through absolutely unimaginable history.

One memorable section is made up of four entirely blacked-out pages, a brilliant nod to the way trauma overwhelms and erases.

This book by my author friend Marlene puts together the shards of colourful glass to reveal the beautiful mosaic of Tess, a self-made but shattered woman feeling closer to a stranger than to herself, recounting stories about Native Americans, Africans, and the farm life of the poor early settlers in Canada.

I like this book because it addresses multiple personality disorders. I think while it is easy for most to relate to physical illness, it can be tough to relate to mental illness. Speaking from experience, someone said uncomprehendingly after a suicide, “But she was intelligent,” as if mental disablement and mental illness were the same thing. We can also catch a cold without being physically disabled.

This collection of interconnected essays, which explores writer Susanne Antonetta’s experience of living with bipolar disorder from myriad angles, is rife with facts and insights as well as her own idiosyncratic artistry. Through examinations of everything from the history of consciousness to the concept of neurodiversity, Antonetta humanizes her diagnosis and delves into the multiplicity of ways that it has informed her personal and professional life. Neither shying away from the difficulties nor dismissing the gifts that mania confers (such as her photographic memory for Shakespeare’s plays), she flips the script on stereotypes and offers an empowering take on what it means to live, and thrive, while managing a serious mental illness.

The brilliant Rewriting the Soul was published in the mid-1990s when the diagnosis of multiple personality disorder was booming, particularly in the USA. The text reflects these times in its focus on the sciences of memory from the late 19th century. Hacking links discussions on memory, trauma, and consciousness in the study of multiple personalities in the 1980s and relates these to earlier discussions on ‘double consciousness’ in the 19th century. He argues that contemporary liberal societies have become obsessed with individual memory and how to analyse and assess it. Hacking skilfully weaves together historical and philosophical perspectives to explore case studies in depth. He questions how and why facts about our memories have become so important in contemporary culture, and how psychiatry has always struggled with interpreting the meaning of memory for its subjects. We are left with a deeper understanding of how a diagnosis ascribed to so many… show more.

Internal Family Systems Therapy by Richard Schwartz taught me a new way to think about the mind and complemented perfectly what I learned in The Transforming Power of Affect. So much of what causes human suffering has to do with conscious and unconscious conflicts. When we learn that our minds consist of various “parts” that can hold differing realities, memories, emotions, sensations, and more, it is so helpful for self-understanding and self-compassion. For me, I stopped trying to reconcile irreconciled aspects of myself and instead set out to learn about the different parts of myself. This further helped me integrate myself for greater well-being.

Dayworld is an elegant but dystopic solution to a possible future population crisis and one that keeps me thinking about how we should restrain ourselves. Humanity can only endure overpopulation by placing people into suspended animation six days a week. Jeff Carid is a rebel and a daybreaker, living a different life each day as he illegally moves through the week. But, when Jeff’s ability to segregate his seven lives deteriorates, the rebels realise they can’t trust him.

I love how Jeff slips from Tuesday-World to Wednesday-World, etc., easing into distinct personalities. This story made me realise different cultures exist in the same place, often never noticing each other, which we see when Jeff looks back with distaste at a previous day’s persona.

Prepare yourself for reading this book, it's soul-destroying and gut-wrenching. I felt nauseous as I read accounts of the repeated abuse and torture of Jen and other children, their vulnerability compounded by individual and institutional racism. I personally know of unthinkable cruelty in childhood, but Jen’s story is on another level. 

Holding little back she takes her readers in to the cesspit of an environment with human cruelty only usually read about in history books and yes, these despicable actions are inflicted by humans. I chose Dehumanisation because Jen’s story is one that people need to read, be shocked into understanding the risks to our children and the long-lasting and devastating impact abuse has.

Don’t be fooled into thinking ‘things are different now’. The different systems in society and legislation for safeguarding and discrimination implemented over the years haven’t stopped it from happening.