The Sydney writers’ festival’s 2016 theme is bibliotherapy, the idea that literature has meditative and restorative effects. “Books are places we can lose ourselves and at the same time find the answers to whatever we might be searching for, even if we don’t quite know what that is,” said the festival’s artistic director Jemma Birrell.

We asked American-British novelist Nina Killham, a bibliotherapist at Melbourne-based culture space the School of Life, to give us a sneak preview of bibliotherapy in action, sharing the great works of fiction she prescribed to people with stress and trauma in their lives.

Self-Help (1985) by Lorrie Moore

I’m a 48-year-old mother. My eldest child has been diagnosed with cancer and her hair is just beginning to fall out. She’s puffy, barely recognisable, from taking the drug prednisone and she has nightmares every night. My middle child is in the midst of her philosophy degree and, naturally, is having an existential crisis. My youngest is 14, and because of all the days I spend shuttling back and forth to the hospital I never see him. My husband’s great but a workaholic and I feel like we’re losing touch with one another. The one and only bright side is that hospital days are long and boring so I have time to read.

Nina Kilham: Oh you poor woman. You need a break and an escape into something that will amuse you but be there patiently waiting when you must return to your family. Lorrie Moore will make you laugh through stories that are very contemporary: a woman suspects her husband of an affair, a child is caught in the middle of her parents’ divorce, a woman grapples with her terminal illness. She has the rhythm of a jazz musician and has crafted these stories in the second person to place you right in the heart of the story. Written in 1985, the details will also make you grin with recognition: expensive beige raincoats, orchid corsages, Jontue perfume. I hope this collection takes you away from your troubles for at least the length of a coffee break.

The Wonders (2014) by Paddy O’Reilly

I’m living in the shadows of teenage memories when my father committed my mother to a mental institution. I’m haunted by the image of my mother hiding under the ironing board, until they found her and took her away. She was only in the hospital for a week or two but my dad used that week to get rid of a lot of crazy stuff my mum had been hoarding. He also got rid of the family cat which was old and only had one eye. He said he took the cat to a farm but now I figure that was bullshit. Every couple of years I’m gripped by a panic attack, waking up in the middle of night in a cold sweat, desperate to know what happened to that cat. I think to myself, tomorrow I’ll call and ask him. But I never do. Somehow it feels ridiculous to ask, after so long.

Nina Killham: To judge from the internet you are not the only one panicking about cats. Any dabbler in psychiatric conundrums can tell you that cat pictures are the symbols of a worldwide obsession with celebrity. So best get you all sorted with a book that tackles this 21st century malady head on.

The Wonders is about three individuals who are brought together by a canny entrepreneur and turned into a freak show. Leon, a man with a ceramic heart that does not beat; Kathryn, a woman sexily enrobed with wool; and Christos, who has implanted himself with metal wings, bring to life our obsession with and abhorrence of the Other. This novel combines realism and wild imagination to create a modern-day fantasy about the darker side of stardom. So stop dreaming of your cat and start reading.

The Little Prince (1943) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

On 12 May 2015, our lives changed forever. I was 35 weeks and four days pregnant when I heard the words no parent-to-be ever wants to hear: “I’m sorry, there’s no heartbeat.” The next day our baby girl was born. She was perfect in every way: a head full of black hair, a cute button nose, 10 fingers and 10 toes. The grief my partner and I continue to face with empty arms is unimaginable. It’s not OK that it happened. And it’s a grief we are slowly learning to navigate. Death before life is a kind of grief that many people find hard to acknowledge or understand. There are few people in the world who were fortunate enough to meet our daughter, which makes it hard for people to relate to our pain. As a team, our baby’s dad and I are slowly finding ways to honour our daughter. One day we’ll find answers for questions like, “how many children do you have?” And each year we’ll celebrate her birthday as we find ways to keep her spirit alive.

I suspect no amount of reading will dislodge the rock in your throat so I will tentatively suggest this novella as a literary balm.

The story begins with the author, an aviator, crashing his airplane in the Sahara desert. While he is desperately trying to repair the plane, a little boy appears and asks him to draw a sheep. This is the Little Prince and we soon learn he has come from the asteroid B-612 where he lived a lonely existence and was tormented by a rose. He has visited several other planets on his way to Earth and relates his encounters in an effort to explain the sorrow and complexity of the world. This classic fable outlines the questions worth asking and the ones that aren’t. As we continuously stretch humanity’s caul with scientific knowledge, The Little Prince reminds us of how little still we understand why things happen as they do.

You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002) by Dave Eggers

I’m 31 and have spent my life searching for meaning but never seemed to find it. At first I thought I would find it in love (I spent my early-20s in a long-term relationship), later through a career in acting, which I dropped out of after only a few years. After that I decided to travel and “save the world”. But then I found even that had its problems. When will I finally feel I’m on the road to somewhere?

Nina Kilham: When will your life start? It is an age-old question. I could go for the obvious and point you to Waiting by Ha Jin, about a man who waits chastely for 18 years to marry the woman he loves, or American Gods by Neil Gaiman which would keep you entertained while you wait with its tales of palatable tiger balls and man-eating vaginas, or even the ultimate self-discovery book, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse.

Instead I will press upon you Eggers’s hilarious and poignant novel following two young men in their 20s as they embark on a worldwide journey to give money to the needy, only to have their youthful idealism endlessly and relentlessly derailed by roadblocks. You will feel so much better, I promise you, knowing there is a writer out there who knows exactly what you are going through and who can paint it all with bold and excruciatingly funny stripes.

Dog Boy (2010) by Eva Hornung

My dog keeps on licking the inside of my daughter’s mouth when I’m not looking ... and I think my daughter likes it.

Don’t even try to read another book to remedy this particular problem. Nothing else will lead you to such a perfect acceptance of all things canine.

Beautiful, lyrical and set in a post-apocalypse, Slavic-toned world, Dog Boy is about a young boy who is abandoned in a big city at the onset of winter. With his mother’s last words ringing in his ears to not trust anyone, he follows a stray dog to her lair. There in the rich smelly darkness he joins four puppies suckling at their mother’s teats. Weak and hairless, Romochka begins his life as a dog. It is a world of beauty and compassion and endless hope.

You will never look at your dog the same way again.

• The School of Life Australia offers bibliotherapy sessions at its Melbourne cafe or via Skype. Susan Elderkin from the School of Life appears at the Sydney writers’ festival as its resident bibliotherapist and at This Book Will Change Your Life in Melbourne on 24 May