Bibliotherapy: Laura Freeman and Viv Groskop, with Alex Clark

Bibliotherapy: Laura Freeman and Viv Groskop, with Alex Clark

Laura Freeman reveals how reading saved her life as she battled with anorexia, learning to embrace life once more through literature. Book by book and meal by meal, (inspired by Dickens’s greedy delight in plum puddings and Virginia Woolf’s appetite for bread and biscuits,) Laura acquired an entire library of reasons to live.

Viv Groskop, in her luminous The Anna Karenina Fix, finds the answers to life’s burning questions in the great Russian novels. Not sure what to do with your love life? Turn to Tolstoy. Suffering from unrequited love? Turgenev can help. Are you socially awkward? Chekhov has the answers.

Laura Freeman is a freelance writer and critic, contributing regularly to The Spectator, The Times, Sunday Times, Daily Mail, Telegraph, TLS, London Evening Standard, Slightly Foxed and Standpoint. She was shortlisted for Features Writer of the Year at the 2014 British Press Awards. The Reading Cure: How Books Restored My Appetite is her first book.

Viv Groskop is an award-winning comedian, crack interviewer and an agony aunt for The Pool. She is the author of I Laughed, I Cried, and a regular contributor to the Guardian, Observer and Mail on Sunday, as well as BBC Front Row, Woman’s Hour and Newsnight.

Alex Clark is a literary journalist and broadcaster who writes for the Guardian, the TLS and Observer. She is Artistic Director of Words & Literature of The Bath Festival and makes frequent appearances on Radio 4. She regularly chairs literary events and has also been on the judging panel for the Booker Prize. Clark hosts the Vintage Podcast, a monthly books podcast, and was the first female editor of Granta.

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