The Novel Cure: From Abandonment to Zestlessness: 751 Books to Cure What Ails You by Ella Berthoud, Susan Elderkin

you’re guilty of exploiting another’s weakness—whether on the playground, in the home, or at work—and have never paused to think about the effects of your behavior on your victim, we defy you to read this novel and remain a bully thereafter. If you know you were a bully in your youth, see: Guilt, and then move on. Sadly, you may know only too well what it’s like to be bullied—many bullies were bullied themselves first. If you belong in this camp, switching sides is not the answer. See our cure for Bullied, being, above.
    See also:
Dictator, being a
BURNING THE DINNER
    The Belly of Paris
    ÉMILE ZOLA
    D omestically speaking, there are few things more catastrophic than burning the dinner. Whether you have slaved for hours over a
daube de boeuf
or rustled up some
crêpes suzette
, a scorched, acrid offering fit only to be flung out onto the garden path for scavenging animals will leave you not just hungry, but ill-humored. On such occasions, grab
The Belly of Paris
, the third novel to be published in Zola’s multigenerational Rougon-Macquart saga.
    It tells the story of Florent Quenu, who returns to his native Paris to live with his family in an apartment on the edge of the newly rebuilt Les Halles food market. As you wander with him here, you will find meat, vegetables, fruit, and cheese, all laid out before you with mouthwatering voluptuousness. Take your pick from stuffed Strasbourg tongues “red and looking as if they had been varnished,” pâtés, casseroles, pickling jars of sauces and stocks, preserved truffles, salmon “gleaming like well-buffed silver,” and peaches with “clear, soft skin like northern girls.” Soon you’ll be dribbling with desire and rushing to your nearest farmers’ market for more.
    Even if you hadn’t burned it, your dinner would not have been as tasty as the delicacies offered up to us by Zola. Tell this to your guests; convince them by reading from this novel aloud. And next time you go shopping, stock up on glorious fruits and fish and cheeses—you can serve them up without needing to turn the oven on.
BURNING WITH DESIRE
    See:
Lust
BUSY, BEING TOO
    This Is Your Life
    MEG WOLITZER
    •   •   •
    The Poisonwood Bible
    BARBARA KINGSOLVER
    Y ou’ve got a company to run (see: Dictator, being a), a music lesson and a gymnastics meet to drive to (see: Children, having), dinner to cook for twenty, and your mother is in the hospital (see: Hospital, being in the). You’re underslept, overscheduled, and feel like you’re about to fall to pieces. Well . . . join the club! Being excessively busy is the universal contemporary human plight—boosted to turbo speed lately by the Internet, cell phones, and twenty-four/seven wiredness. Unsurprisingly, this epidemic of busyness is a popular subject among wise and mordant writers who not only recognize the prevalent Joan of Arc–like compulsion toward self-perfection, but the attendant risks of self-immolation. Not to mention the burning fallout.
    In Meg Wolitzer’s novel
This Is Your Life
, Dottie Engels is an overweight single mother and stand-up comic whose career is exploding, in a good way. Dottie’s daughters, rather than exulting in their mother’s new fame and applauding her impressive array of gigs, sulk and pout as her star rises. They would rather have a mother who is miserable, weeping, and thwarted, but
at home
with them, instead of one who is ecstatically fulfilled on a spotlit stage taking bow after bow. We’re all for mothers who work, but there’s a limit to the successfulness of success, it seems. If your life is busy because you’ve taken on multiple roles, it’s worth asking whether the success of one might be preventing the success of another.
    In Barbara Kingsolver’s
The Poisonwood Bible
, it’s a father, an overzealous missionary named Nathan Price, whose fanatical zeal to convert Congolese forest dwellers to Christianity brings him, his wife, and four daughters to Africa. Price’s quixotic