A panic attack can feel like the end of the world. In his new novel, Pan, Michael Clune writes that during such an episode, “your consciousness gets so strong it actually leaps out of your mind entirely. It starts vibrating your body. It shakes meat and bone.” My colleague Scott Stossel reviewed the book this week, writing that anxiety can make “rays of sunlight come through my eyes and get in my chest, and I feel like I’m gagging on them.” Your stomach might feel like it’s falling through the floor; your vision might blur; you might appear glassy, paralyzed by fear. Or, as in Lee Lai’s new graphic novel, Cannon, a panic attack might look like a menacing bunch of magpies piling up on furniture.
First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic’s Books section:
In Clune’s Pan, a teenage boy in the 1990s Chicago suburbs begins having debilitating panic attacks and seeks to make some kind of sense of them, researching the Greek god Pan, from whom the word panic is derived. Lai’s Cannon is very different stylistically, but it also attempts to communicate what panic feels like and how one might start learning to live with it. Its protagonist, Lucy, is a line cook in 2017 Montreal who manages her anxiety by running and biking while listening to soothing self-help tapes that remind her to focus on her breathing. Her best friend, Trish, calls her “Luce Cannon” (Cannon for short) as a joke: She’s known to be steady, reliable, and contemplative. But underneath her chill facade, Cannon’s about to blow her lid. She’s taking care of her ill-tempered grandfather almost single-handedly, she’s trying to ward off her jerk boss’s innuendos without losing her job, and she believes that Trish takes her friendship (and her time) for granted.
The comic focuses on Cannon, but readers don’t get to access her internal monologue. Mostly, we have to guess her state of mind based on her body language, her actions, and her words. The biggest hint we get is the birds: Magpies hop on her bike, shed feathers in her apartment, and hop around her grandfather’s kitchen. None of the characters, save Cannon, seems to see them. But they’re harbingers of an event that’s depicted in the book’s first panels: Cannon and Trish sit in the ruins of a darkened, wrecked restaurant, birds perched calmly around them. After this flash-forward, the narrative goes back three months, and we watch Cannon get closer and closer to that pivotal moment; all the while, the flock of magpies grows.
Despite its knotty subject, Cannon is a joy to read. Its art manages to be both spare and full of emotion; its dialogue feels lived-in. And it’s a cathartic, unexpectedly gleeful story about anxiety. For years, Cannon bottles up all her fears. But as the early scene in the restaurant shows, that’s not sustainable. When she explodes, she’s on the verge of a panic attack. Instead of turning her worries inward, however, she transmutes them into rage, smashing dishware and overturning tables. The birds triumphantly swoop around with her, diving and flapping across the pages. Afterward, the magpies aren’t gone—there’s still plenty of stress on her plate—but Cannon finds it a bit easier to breathe.
Baker is best known for his experimental debut novel, The Mezzanine, which takes place largely during a single ride up an escalator. In this, Baker’s second novel, the author brings the same level of detail to a—only slightly—longer stretch of activity: a father feeding his newborn daughter. Giving the baby a bottle constitutes the surface-level action of the novel while the narration acts like a boomerang, flying past and returning to meditations on the narrator's bond with his wife, Patty. Their partnership is generous and kind. They make up quickly after fighting; they playfully tease each other; they comfort each other—such as when the narrator reassures Patty after she’s criticized for her terrible spelling. Baker perfectly captures the intimacy of everyday love. A late chapter in the book detailing the couple’s euphemism for defecating—big jobs—and how the phrase takes its place in their personal lexicon is unexpectedly moving, a testament to how the most mundane parts of a shared life can be the most profound. Room Temperature is a book in which not much happens, and everything happens—a fitting description for an excellent marriage. — Isle McElroy
