A mole, a viper, a toad : Brian Dillon's Essayism

Essayism is the story of intense unhappiness and the possibility of happiness. It can't help but speak sometimes of the author's mother, and her suffering, and the way she transmitted this to her son. It isn't sentimental; it never tries to pretend that there is a lesson to be learned from this poor woman's misery, and the misery of her poor sons. Perhaps I might not recommend Dillon's books to someone who is similarly prone to the contagion of unhappiness; it takes a certain readerly fortitude to resist the dark reasonings of the memoir, the catalogue of miseries that is Tormented Lives. But I am so grateful to have been, at last, the right reader for Essayism. It is Dillon's life preserver, thrown to himself, and it is joyfully, wonderfully good.