As a child, Andrew Relph had a reading disability; now he is a psychoanalyst, and professionally adept in the art of conversation. Not Drowning, Reading is a work of literary non-fiction - a memoir about the art and the gift of reading. Relph's essays show how one might map a life through reading. From Amis to Bellow, Blake to Herzog, and Shakespeare to Woolf, these essays ask why it is that books are so important to us, and why our relationships with authors and characters can be as vital as any we form in 'real life'.