Book Review: The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life by Suleika Jaouad
In a literary marketplace that is surfeited with imitations and imitations of imitations, The Book of Alchemy is a startlingly original book. It concerns the value of journaling, both as a therapeutic device and as an art form. However, it is not a mere explanation of how valuable journaling is to writers; instead, it takes a practical, hands-on approach. Besides writing an introduction to the overall book and to each of the ten sections, Jaouad has assembled one hundred authors, musicians, artists, and other fascinating contributors, each of whom not only provides an essay, but also a prompt to stimulate the imaginations of fellow journalists.
As Jaouad explains, she began keeping a journal when she was diagnosed with life-threatening leukemia at the age of twenty-two and told that she had only a thirty-five percent chance of survival. There followed years of torment as she suffered through multiple rounds of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. As her hair fell out and her body became more and more emaciated, as she lost friends, her then boyfriend, and her previous dreams and ambitions, journaling was a creative outlet that helped her cling to her sanity and her hopes for the future. She writes that “journaling through illness gave me a productive way to engage with my new reality. Rather than shutting down or surrendering to hopelessness, I could trace the contours of what I was thinking and feeling and gain a sense of agency over it.” It was a long and difficult path to healing, which she recounts in her awesome book Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted. And when she was deemed cured, she made a solo road trip around the country in a camper van to visit many of the people she had corresponded with during her illness.
Jaouad began the project that became The Book of Alchemy shortly after the COVID lockdown in 2020. She says: “I launched a project that combined all of the elements that had helped me: a daily journaling practice, done communally, with a short essay for inspiration and a prompt to get started. I reached out to the most remarkable people I knew, asking them to contribute an essay and an accompanying prompt.” Besides compiling material for the book, she also started a newsletter on Substack called the Isolation Journals.
Some of the contributors to The Book of Alchemy are celebrity authors such as Elizabeth Gilbert, George Saunders, and Pico Iyer, while others are cancer survivors, professional surfers, and even convicts. All have stories to tell, and they use these stories as springboards to prompt you, the readers, to become storytellers as well.
I would have been content to read and absorb and be inspired by the book without the prompts, but the prompts provide immeasurable added value. As I read through the book, I made notes on the prompts that I thought I could use for personal inspiration, and when I had time I made a paraphrased list. (In my penurious state, I got the book out of the library so once I returned it I would not have it to refer to later. Besides, I find that having the prompts in a list works well for me. If I am ready to begin a writing session and I need an inspirational nudge, I can skim the prompts until one leaps out at me, clings to my psyche, and won’t let go. From there I can take it anywhere my mind and heart lead.)
In short, I highly recommend this book, not only for writers who need story and essay ideas, but for anyone who wants to attempt journaling for fun and therapy.
As an afterword, I should share that Jaouad confides that while preparing The Book of Alchemy, she had a relapse and had to undergo another bone marrow transplant. The point is not that journaling in some magical way takes away the pain, but it enables you to make sense of it and convert whatever you are going through into art.
