the sense of terrified isolation that is key to the story, the worry that what we feel we can never express. And it held out a hope rarely signaled in Wallace’s earlier work but dear to his recovery experiences: the possibility that telling a story can heal.

More than anything, books conspired to weave themselves together into pathways and bridges over the gaping holes and sucking swamps, magic carpets of paper and text that allowed me not to sink in. And in the very worst of times, when grief flung me back into the holes, with their treacherous, slippery sides, books were a ladder, physical and mental