books for broken hearts

Reading has always been a solace and an escape-- but I’ve found even books now contain landmines. Since my baby left me I can’t bear anything that takes place in New York (where we lived) or London (where he is now) or any place in Britain for that matter (gone are Ruth Rendell et al, decent mysteries, all UK fiction) ; love is out (natch) and therefore gone is anything smart and sassy and all chick lit; and so too are books about writers (he is one and there is a plethora of these. “Write what you know” yes, but honest to god fiction means you get to make stuff up) reporters (he was one, and this means even movies are no distraction, Scoop is definitely out, The Devil Wears Prada iffy) So this leaves me pretty much with murder mysteries set in Chicago (if I skip over the bits where the heroine has a love interest/tussle) and children’s books. Happily, however, I have found a few good reads which will soothe an aching heart and if it not be aching, will at least entertain you.
How I Live Now is pegged as YA, a book for kids, but that sells it short. It is a story about children, yes, or rather "young adults" and alarmingly it is set in England but not an England any of us could possibly know -- it is a country of another time, embroiled in a nameless, amorphous war that takes all parents away and throws the children into a kind of chaos. The war makes no sense, the children are defenseless and struggling to survive, to figure it out, to find comfort if not joy; power fails, systems fail, rules fail. The story captures the creeping anxiety that The Painted Bird does, without being quite so brutal. So why read it? Because it is also beautiful, a story of survival which quite frankly hit the spot, because we all need to consider, in the age of terrorism (or terrible acts, per ex) "how I live now."
I have also been addicted to two books I blush to talk about -- Elegance, by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux and Entre Nous - A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl by Debra Ollivier. It is my theory that great books, or books we love, are a function of when we read them as much as their actual content. When you need it, there is nothing like The Fountainhead to stir you -- years later not so much. I am not proud of this but in my state of inner turmoil and sadness it is refreshing to read a how-to manual on being more French, and hopefully more alluring, as per Entre Nous; Elegance is a book on, well, elegance and how to attain it, or how a woman attained it in the late 1950's and early 60's. This is all about taking good care yourself, preserving inner peace, the remaking and remodeling of a self which in my case was left behind by a beloved. These books are fun but they are also a way back to centre when you are feeling too raw in the world -- both speak of discretion and looking after your own soul.