3 New Books About the Beauty in Anxiety

You know that meme that only gets more and more relevant as the days pass: A dog in a hat sits at a table. Ignoring both his coffee cup and the flames that engulf the entire space around him, the dog smiles slightly, then wider, almost manic. “This is fine,” he says. If this seems #relatable to your life, you may have anxiety. And who doesn’t? Jobs are fleeting and precarious, you have a million responsibilities, and who knows what is happening online this week? Anxiety can be crushing and destructive, but the three authors in this week’s book club know that it can often be fascinating, sometimes even with its own strange beauty; if nothing else, it’s a profound and uniting part of being human. Pick up one of these books about the bizarre buzz in the back of the brain (but only if it doesn’t stress you out too much).

<em><a data-affiliate-link="" href="https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Flammable-Gabrielle-Bell/dp/1941250181?tag=bm01f-20" rel="noskim" target="_blank">Everything Is Flammable</a></em>

Graphic artist Gabrielle Bell didn’t have the luxury of ignoring the flames around her; in fact, the fire in her life was very much of the literal variety, destroying her mother’s home. When Bell’s mother was reduced to pitching a tent in her blaze-scorched yard in rural Northern California, the dutiful daughter knew three things: 1) She had to leave New York to go help her mother, 2) It was going to be a painful trip, given their uneasy relationship, and 3) She was probably going to get a great deal of writing material out of this pain. Is Bell’s storytelling exploitation, creativity, or therapy? Possibly a bit of all three, but it’s all going to be messy, intense, and hilarious: Like any good anarchic, anxious art, Bell’s book is a riot.

<em>Imagine Wanting Only This</em>

Anxiety can have real physical as well as psychological effects, and it can affect entire families, being passed on through generations like the world’s most jittery legacy. Continuing the trend of graphic novel memoirs, Radtke, managing editor of Sarabande Books, writes a non-chronological narrative that meanders through her life and possible future, dealing specifically with a particular rare variant of heart failure that runs in her family.

<em>A Line Made by Walking</em>

The heroine of this week’s lone fictional entry, Frankie, tries to stave off the pain of her anxiety and depression by setting strict rules and conditions for her life. Like in Bell’s book, Frankie finds herself temporarily relocating from urban to rural life after she has a breakdown; she moves from Dublin into her late grandmother’s bungalow on rural Ireland’s “turbine hill.” Frankie, struggling through art school, is motivated by her new surroundings to take up photography again, starting a new series of wilderness and dead-animal portraits.