On Agoraphobia

Part memoir, part cultural history: a brilliant, funny, moving, and insightful book about agoraphobia, its history, its appearances in literature, and a reckoning of a life lived under its rule.

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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.