A Brief History of Anxiety | Area Woman | Believe Me | Playing House | When She Was Bad | Anthologies |
A Brief History of Anxiety —
Yours & Mine
The millions of North Americans who silently cope with anxiety at last have a witty, articulate champion in Patricia Pearson, who shows that the anxious are hardly “nervous nellies” with “weak characters” who just need medicine and a pat on the head. Instead, Pearson questions what it is about twenty-first century American culture that is making people anxious, and offers some surprising answers—as well as some inspiring solutions based on her own fierce battle to drive the beast away.
Drawing on personal episodes of incapacitating dread as a vivid, often hilarious guide to her quest to understand this most ancient of human emotions, Pearson delves into the history and geography of anxiety. Why are North Americans so much more likely to suffer than Latin Americans? Why did Darwin treat hypochondria with sprays from a hose? Why have we forgotten the insights of some of our greatest philosophers, theologians, and psychologists in favor of prescribing addictive drugs? In this blend of fascinating reportage and poignant memoir, Pearson ends with her struggle to withdraw from antidepressants and to find more self-aware and philosophically-grounded ways to strengthen the soul.
What people are saying about A Brief History...
"A genre-busting page turner: a portrait of Pearson's lifelong struggle with anxiety, melded with a journalistic investigation of what ails her, and me and us." — Salon
"Pearson is a daredevil on the page; her prose somersaults and vaults, does splits and juggles, keeping the reader entertained by her wit and amazed by her dexterity as an investigative journalist." — Newsday
"Pearson examine[s] modern civilization and its discontents, as well as her own miseries, thoughtfully and incisively. Major points for wit and flair." — New York Times
"Exhilarating. Finely crafted. Pearson makes plenty of intriguing and arguable observations. If you're anxious all the time and you think about that anxiety a lot, this collection will provide you some companionable relief." — Slate
"[Pearson] offers readers a learned hand through the fraught world of anxiety politics...this book offers the anxious reader a recipe, one that is sure to quiet." — Miami Herald
"Pithy, revealing, often funny, and highly intelligent...hothouse flowers like me will find themselves nodding vehemently, underlining passages, reading parts aloud to loved ones, even finding comfort and calm in Pearson’s deeply penetrating view into our version of the human condition." — Elle magazine
Pre-publication reviews of A Brief History...
"If only more psychology were written with the literate intelligence of this book. It is a weaving of stories that accomplishes a great deal: cultural analysis, psychological insight, and personal reflection. You will enjoy it and learn from it. If you are ever afraid of the dark, crowds of people, heights, and the insanity of your fellow humans, as I am, you may find comfort here."
— Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and A Life's Work
"In this meditation on anxiety, shot through with bright insights and shafts of illumination, Pearson has subtly interwoven her personal story
with the history of anxiety in a manner that left me revisiting both the book and my memories of it long after I had finished. A Brief History deftly conveys a sense of where we have come to, offers succour to anyone afflicted with nerves, and may yet take a place beside some of the cultural landmarks in the field."
— Dr. David Healy, author of Let Them Eat Prozac and The Anti-Depressant Era
"A beautifully sustained riff on the link between our beliefs and our symptoms. The world is inscribing us with anxiety and Pearson—sensitive, eloquent, and very funny—is the perfect palimpsest. Captivating, thought-provoking and filled with original scholarship."
— Jeff Warren, author of The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness
"A bubble bath of a book to lift your spirits and
make you laugh. Pearson's wry and illuminating
insights into this modern state of mind are better
medicine than Effexor."
— Marni Jackson, author of The Mother Zone and Pain: The Science and Culture of Why we Hurt
A Brief History of Anxiety is published by Random House in Canada and Bloomsbury in the US.
Area Woman Blows Gasket —
and other tales from the domestic frontier
Area Women Unite! In this sharp and sophisticated collection of essays, columnist Patricia Pearson takes us on a hilarious tour of our twenty-first-century obsessions and distractions.
Patricia Pearson is a working woman, wife, and mother on the verge. Whether it’s being humiliated by the “Beauty Bullies” at the Lancome counter or failing to live up to the “Serene Mother” ideal, Pearson has had enough of negotiating our present-day myths and fads. In fact, she’s formed a few opinions on the matter and can’t wait to share them with you.
In Area Woman Blows Gasket, Pearson plumbs every facet of modern life, marriage, and motherhood, from choosing the right vegan-bran-hemp diet for your family to confronting your husband’s irrational fear of mayonnaise to finding a way to return to work and not turn your child into a contract killer. Adult education classes, therapy, $100 haircuts, the latest news on what causes cancer, Christmas shopping—all come into sharp focus with the help of Pearson’s comic eye. Her wry brand of wisdom is a refreshing and long-awaited release from our confusing and often contradictory world.
"Patricia Pearson was born with that infra-X-ray-spectroscop-ic quirk of vision that sees behind life's facades and into the true nature of things —
things like just how surreal real life can be. Luckily for us, her strange
powers are tuned to the Hilarity setting; she copes with life by laughing at
it, and you'll laugh along with her on every page of this smart, irreverent,
and best of all funny, funny book."
– Bruce McCall
Area Woman Blows Gasket is published by BloomsburyUSA
Believe Me —
How curious can a five-year-old really be?
Frannie and Calvin are back, and even more baffled, in this hilarious and heartwarming sequel to Patricia Pearson’s critically acclaimed comic novel, Playing House.
Frannie Mackenzie thought she finally had her life on track. Even though she backed into love and parenthood — getting pregnant before she even knew how to spell her lover Calvin’s last name (P-U-D-D-I-E) — the birth of baby Lester seemed to put everything in the right order at last. Ha! When her mother-in-law, Bernice, takes theatrically to her death bed and Calvin can’t deal, Frannie has to step up to the next big challenge: what to make of mortality when you’re pretty sure there’s no afterlife. And Lester, at five, knows just how to test his mother’s verbal and spiritual limits. Spotting a crucifix in a local church, Lester inquires, “What happened to that guy?”
There’s certainly no lack of absolutists in Frannie’s life: an atheist scientist bent on disproving God, a near-death experiencer, a suburban shaman, and the whole neo-con coterie of magazine editors at The Moral Volcano who pay her salary. But when it comes down to surveying the landscape of their own beliefs, Frannie and Calvin find that a dying woman and a growing child offer the most lasting lessons on life and faith.
"Pearson's wit is in fine form throughout. As are her
observations about everything from the quirks of small-town life to the
daily rhythms of motherhood. Most importantly, Believe Me captures the
persistence of our childlike wonder at the world. Is there anything larger
than us? Why is there pain? What happens when we die? Whether we answer
these questions or not, Pearson's novel suggests that grappling with them
helps us define what matters."
– Quill & Quire
Believe Me is published by Random House Canada.
Playing House —
How hard can motherhood really be?
In an awesome testimony to the power of denial, magazine editor Frannie MacKenzie has convinced herself that her recent weight gain and pimply face are solely due to the daily dose of mashed potatoes with gravy she's been devouring. It's only when that little stick turns blue that Frannie asks herself the question: "You can't, by any chance, be pregnant?"
Now, the one thought blazing through Frannie's formerly sharp New York brain is that she wants to keep this baby-despite her ultra-small apartment and not being completely sure how to spell the father's name. Being pregnant is so out of character: how will she break the news to her boss, her mother, let alone the father, Calvin Puddie (or is it Pudhey)?
As Frannie grows, so do her problems: from napping during dinner with a famous author, to being banned from the U.S. and marooned in Toronto, to actually falling in love with her baby's father... "You don't find the one, do you?" Frannie muses. "The best one, the Perfect One. You just keep running like Wil E. Coyote, until all of a sudden you're off the cliff. You fall into your life with the man who is running beside you."
Playing House is a witty, heart-touching look at falling by accident into life's most profound commitment. Patricia Pearson has deftly captured the self-doubt, messy bodily fluids and inconceivable love that accompany being a mother, and the trepidation and joy with which two people step across the threshold of parenthood and into a realm that is at once alien and completely right.
Praise for Playing House
"Like Anne Lamott, Patricia Pearson writes about life, love, dating, and unexpected motherhood, with humor, anger, and ultimately, forgiveness. This book has an irreverent sadness, but it's tinged with a kind of real joy people never want to talk about, especially when life takes that sometimes ridiculous, totally uncalled for, turn."
—Lisa Gabriele, author of Tempting Faith DiNapoli
"A must read … a stylish, sex-and-the-city look at the very personal life of a wise and witty woman."
—Melissa Senate, author of See Jane Date
"Playing House is charming, delightful, laugh-out-loud funny and deeply moving. The heroine, Frannie, is as quirkily real as your best girlfriend. Every detail of this novel captures the universal plights and joys of parenting, and yet is achingly specific to Frannie and her new family. It's a love story for real people-people who understand that "happily ever after" must be taken one day at a time."
—Elin Hilderbrand, author of The Beach Club, Nantucket Nights, and Summer People
When
She Was Bad —
How and Why Women get Away With Murder
Why do some women murder their children? Why
do others team up with men in ghoulish killing sprees? What motivates
the female serial killer? When She Was Bad explores the enigmatic
heart of female darkness, drawing into focus such fascinating characters
as Dorothea Puente, who murdered several elderly tenants in her boarding
house in Sacramento; Mary Beth Tinning, who killed eight of her children
in upstate New York; Karla Homolka, who joined forces with Paul Bernardo
to abduct, rape and murder school girls in southern Ontario; and Karla
Faye Tucker, the born-again Christian who was recently executed in Texas
for having killed two people with a pickax.
"A compelling, frightening look at women, not as victims of violence, but
as perpetrators of it...gripping, controversial material."
— Kirkus, starred review
"Effectively cremates the myth of innate female innocence by parading a violent chain gain of gals gone wrong...Compelling."
— Vanity Fair.
"Punchily written...fascinating reading."
— London Times
"Riveting."
— Women's Review of Books
"Masterful."
— Glamour
"Pearson
is a good reporter who has done the research to back up her most inflammatory
claims."
— The New Yorker
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Available from Amazon.com | ISBN 0140243887 | Penguin Books
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Anthologies
Patricia's writing has been anthologized in 'The Penguin Anthology of Canadian Humour', 'Dropped Threads: Beyond the Small Circle', 'To Arrive Where You Are', published by The Banff Centre Press, and 'The Art of Writing', 6th Edition