REVIEW
EXPRESS YOURSELF
Mark Reid on two titles that
demonstrate writing’s power to help
bring about personal change
Coventry by Rachel Cusk,
Faber & Faber, paperback
Feel Free by Zadie Smith,
Penguin, paperback
THESE ARE BOOKS OF ESSAYS by
two well-known British novelists
– Rachel Cusk (The Outline Trilogy)
and Zadie Smith (White Teeth,
On Beauty). While both share
an advocacy of writing as an
expression of people’s ability to
change, these are not inward-
looking diaries but represent self-
activation and connection with
the world. As Smith puts it when
writing about her passions, ‘life
feels larger the more you engage
with it’.
The authors offer lots of advice
on how to write fiction and why
it’s good for us. They teach creative
writing – Cusk does so because ‘a
desire to write is a desire to live
more honestly through language’,
and this idea seems particularly
suited to those in recovery.
‘Finding your voice,’ writes Cusk, is
a ‘therapeutic necessity, and for so
many people a matter of urgency’.
Creative writing provides a
‘non-alienating social space’ where
group members are guided to
be imaginative and at their best.
Cusk believes writing can release
the ‘true self’. She was brought
up as a Catholic and tells of how,
on a school trip to see the severed
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relic hand of a female martyr,
girls were put in detention if they
fainted on seeing it. Smith, in part
as a result of her own upbringing,
sees the notion of self differently.
A sense of who she was proved
‘impossible’ for her to find, as she
grew up ‘neither black nor white
but both’. And so writing fiction
is ‘far more of an escape from self
than an exploration of it’. As Smith
says, ‘when you are not at home
in yourself as a child, you don’t
experience yourself as “natural” or
“inevitable” as many other people
seem to do’.
These essays reveal many
emotions. The Coventry of Cusk’s
title is the experience of passive
aggressive behaviour by her
parents who ‘send her to Coventry’
– refusing to speak to her for long
periods. Crucially many of the
subjects here are ones we can
all have an opinion on and write
about. Smith’s tastes in food for
example are refreshingly simple.
She just likes to eat ‘any old food
– whatever’s put in front of me
foodwise gets a five-star review. ’
While Cusk’s ‘Driving as Metaphor’
looks at how the decision to
learn to drive makes people seem
The authors offer
lots of advice on
how to write fiction
and why it’s good
for us. They teach
creative writing
– Cusk does so
because ‘a desire to
write is a desire to
live more honestly
through language’
different to those who opt not to
do so. Non-drivers ‘seem saner
and more efficient. They scatter
and divide themselves less. They
appear free. How did they know
not to do it?’
BE INSPIRED!
Get creative at this year’s DDN Conference, ‘It’s Not a
Rehearsal!’, on Wednesday 18 March at The Glee Club in
Birmingham. Our programme takes an exciting new
direction this year by including speakers and sessions to
motivate and inspire you to explore your creativity and
enhance your wellbeing, including looking at the power of
creative writing. Programme details and booking information
at www.drinkanddrugsnews.com – see you there!
WWW.DRINKANDDRUGSNEWS.COM