Bibliophobia - by Sarah Chihaya (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Have you ever read a book and felt so gutted by it that you knew you'd never recover? That it made you sit differently in your own skin? A book that complicated everything you believed in and changed the way you read the world around you forever? This is what Sarah Chihaya calls a "Life Ruiner". Sarah's Life Ruiner was The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. When she read it in her high school English class, she could no longer pretend not to notice how alien she felt as a Japanese American in a predominantly White suburb of Cleveland. Shaken, she set out on a quest-for the book that would show her who she was and how to live in an inhospitable world. There were lots of scripts available, and she tried to follow them-skinny athlete, angsty artist, ambitious academic. But a lifelong struggle with depression thwarted the resolution to every plot, and when she was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, the world became an unreadable blank page. In the aftermath, she was faced with a question: can we ever truly rewrite the stories that govern our lives? Alternately searing and laugh-out-loud funny, Bibliophobia is a deft combination of memoir and criticism in the vein of Geoff Dyer and Olivia Laing. Through a series of books, including The Bluest Eye, Anne of Green Gables, Possession, A Tale for the Time Being, and The Last Samurai, Sarah Chihaya interrogates her cultural identity, her relationship with depression, and the necessary and painful ways that books can push back on the readers who love them."--

Book Synopsis

"A wise, tremendously moving exploration of what it means to seek companionship and understanding, in books and in life."--Hua Hsu, author of Stay True

"[A] stirring and sparkling new memoir."--The Washington Post

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE MONTH: Time, Los Angeles Times, Cosmopolitan

Books can seduce you. They can, Sarah Chihaya believes, annihilate, reveal, and provoke you. And anyone incurably obsessed with books understands this kind of unsettling literary encounter. Sarah calls books that have this effect "Life Ruiners".

Her Life Ruiner, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, became a talisman for her in high school when its electrifying treatment of race exposed Sarah's deepest feelings about being Japanese American in a predominantly white suburb of Cleveland. But Sarah had always lived through her books, seeking escape, self-definition, and rules for living. She built her life around reading, wrote criticism, and taught literature at an Ivy League University. Then she was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, and the world became an unreadable blank page. In the aftermath, she was faced with a question. Could we ever truly rewrite the stories that govern our lives?

Bibliophobia is an alternately searing and darkly humorous story of breakdown and survival told through books. Delving into texts such as Anne of Green Gables, Possession, A Tale for the Time Being, The Last Samurai, Chihaya interrogates her cultural identity, her relationship with depression, and the intoxicating, sometimes painful, ways books push back on those who love them.

Review Quotes

"A seriously sharp and nuanced look at the impact books can have on us as readers, and our identities . . . If you read one non-fiction book this month, make it this."--Cosmopolitan

"[Bibliophobia] is a reminder that instead of searching for a story that explains everything, we might do well to embrace the uncertainty of the unwritten pages still before us."--The Atlantic

"[Bibliophobia] crackles with the electrical charge of a broken taboo. . . A reading experience as haunting as the ones it describes."--The New Republic

"[A] stirring and sparkling new memoir."--The Washington Post

"[Chihaya's] prose crackles with curious expressions during this reflection before snapping back into the analytic mindset of the scholar. . . . Little gems of daily moments imbued with catharsis."--The Los Angeles Review of Books

"Chihaya's masterful storytelling weaves books and literary criticism. . . . [Bibliophobia is] alternately beautiful and painful."--The Rumpus

"Rich, complex, and rewarding, as the very best reading should be."--Bookreporter

"A wise, tremendously moving exploration of what it means to seek companionship and understanding, in books and in life."--Hua Hsu, author of Stay True

"Sarah Chihaya has written a book that's so wise, so funny, so understanding of all the layering foibles and tragedies that can form a person, that by the end, I held the book with a feeling of awe."--Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby

"Bibliophobia feels like the first book I have ever read that accords the correct (massive) weight to the role of books in my own life, reminding me how high the stakes were when I first fell in love with reading, and restoring to me the sense that books are still a matter of life and death."--Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot, Either/Or, and Possessed

"Reading Bibliophobia is like having a deep and intimate conversation with a kindred lover of literature: The world may not become better, but in this conversation we each become less isolated and lonely."--Yiyun Li, author of The Book of Goose

"A beautiful, rapturous, and darkly funny meditation on the mutual ruin, love, haunting, heartbreak, betrayal, fear, and dependence that we share with the books that wreck and redeem our lives."--Namwali Serpell, author of The Furrows

"An instant classic. This heady, confiding memoir offers a refreshingly nuanced take on what books do to us."--Ada Calhoun, New York Times bestselling author of Why We Can't Sleep

"Sarah Chihaya is funny, subtle, and--particularly when writing about her own life--as sharp as cut glass."--Andrea Long Chu, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York magazine critic

"Passionate reading entwines with madness in essayist and NYU English instructor Chihaya's plaintive debut. Evocative and astute . . ."--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Brave and perceptive . . . Chihaya has the gift of being both dryly funny and searingly honest about her innermost thoughts."--BookPage, starred review

"[Bibliophobia] may encourage rereading or reading anew, and taking a closer look into how literature can sustain or derail us."--Booklist, starred review

About the Author

Sarah Chihaya is a book critic, essayist, and editor. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, New York magazine, The Atlantic, and The Yale Review, among other places, and she is the co-author of The Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism. She has taught at Princeton University, New York University, and UC Berkeley. She is currently a contributing editor at Los Angeles Review of Books and lives in Brooklyn.