How ‘therapeutic’ fiction restored Clare Allan’s faith in humanity
Clare Allan, the author of Poppy Shakespeare who joined us for our 'New Beginnings' Readers' Day last March (and also wrote about her dog, Meg, for The Reader 39), is a columnist for the Guardian on mental health issues. This week, she's written about how fiction has restored her faith in humanity:
But in reality we live in a world peopled entirely by round characters presented to us from the outside. Trapped as we are in our own perspective, there is a constant temptation to flatten those around us, to see types as opposed to individuals. But fiction forces on us the dizzying reality that inside every human being is a world as unique as our own.
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