'One of my favourite living writers: intelligent, lucid and, most
impressive of all, funny' Jonathan Coe
'Intellectually curious, emotionally bracing and immensely erudite'
Blake Morrison, The Guardian
'Captivating' Richard Beard
If we're talking agoraphobia, we're talking books. I slip between their
covers, lose myself in the turn of one page, re-discover myself on the
next. Reading is a game of hide-and-seek. Narrative and neurosis, uneasy
bedfellows sleeping top to toe.
When Graham Caveney was in his early twenties he began to suffer from
what was eventually diagnosed as agoraphobia. What followed were decades
of managing his condition and learning to live within the narrow limits
it imposed on his life: no motorways, no dual carriageways, no shopping
centres, limited time outdoors.
Graham's quest to understand his illness brought him back to his first
love: books. From Harper Lee's Boo Radley, Ford Madox Ford, Emily
Dickinson, and Shirley Jackson: the literary world is replete with
examples of agoraphobics - once you go looking for them.
On Agoraphobia is a fascinating, entertaining and sometimes painfully
acute look at what it means to go through life with an anxiety disorder
that evades easy definition.
