A review by mwgerard
Bibliophobia: A Memoir by Sarah Chihaya

challenging emotional hopeful informative medium-paced

4.5

My review: https://www.mwgerard.com/review-bibliophobia/

Believe it not, bibliophobia is a real thing. The fear of books, or the fear of words and reading, is a psychological condition that disrupts people’s ability to enjoy a book or even a visit to the library. Author Sarah Chihaya recounts her bout with it as well as exploring how we absorb and tell stories.

Sarah is young and successful, teaching literature at a university. She earned her degrees in English and French from Yale before completing a PhD in comparative literature at UC Berkeley. Her entire adult life (and even earlier) centered around close reading, critical thinking, and story analysis. She tore apart writing in order to see how it fit together, and then synthesized new ideas about it. And she was really good at it. Then one night, her brain stopped. She sat down on a snowy stoop and fell asleep.

She had a nervous breakdown, a collapse that required hospitalization to treat the exhaustion. She eventually returned home to begin slowly putting things back together. But there was one hurdle she hadn’t anticipated — a fear of reading. Even looking at a page, the words would swim and she couldn’t find any meaning in them. She had bibliophobia.

My doctors guessed that it was due to a new medication or an emotional decompression period after my hospital stay. But I believed then, and still believe a little, that this new disaster — the consequence of having allowed myself a breakdown — was punitively moral. I had failed, as a read and as a writer, and this was my fitting punishment. I had one task — one book to write — and I had not completed it. I had failed books, and I did not deserve them anymore. ~ Loc. 307

As she revisits the struggle in this memoir, she also considers her relationship to certain books over her lifetime. She reconsiders how we find meaning and enjoyment in reading, and writing, with insight and even humor.

Sarah has found her words again, and some balance in her life. Her memoir displays both her talent as a writer and thinker. She reminds us all of the need to take care of ourselves, even in our enthusiasms. After all, we can’t enjoy that which sustains us if we allow it to consume us.

Despite the gravity of the topic, and the scholarly nature of her expertise, this is a thoroughly engrossing, diverting, and approachable read, no matter your background. It is incredibly humble and human — the first ingredients in any good foray into writing.