Ill Feelings: stories of unexplained illness

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Ill Feelings (paperback) (kindle) Ill Feelings: stories of unexplained illness
IllFeelingsbook.jpg
Author Alice Hattrick
Country United Kingdom (alternative cover), Australia
Language English
Subject ME/CFS, medically unexplained physical symptoms, literary criticism, gender bias, medical gaslighting, stigma and discrimination
Genre Memoir
Publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK), Scribe publications (Australia)
Publication date
Aug 25, 2021
Media type Paperback, kindle
Pages 360
ISBN 9781913097646, 9781922310149
Website https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/ill-feelings

Background[edit | edit source]

Alice Hattrick's mother became ill with ME/CFS when Alice was eight; diagnosis took two years. Alice also developed ME/CFS as a child, and remains ill. Ill Feelings reflects on Alice's experirnces, and those of other disabled writers, and the the attitudes of the medical profession and society in general on poorly understood or unexplained illness.[1]

Synopsis[edit | edit source]

"In 1995 Alice’s mother collapsed with pneumonia. She never fully recovered and was eventually diagnosed with ME, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Then Alice got ill. Their symptoms mirrored their mother’s and appeared to have no physical cause; they received the same diagnosis a few years later. Ill Feelings blends memoir, medical history, biography and literary non-fiction to uncover both of their case histories, and branches out into the records of ill health that women have written about in diaries and letters. Their cast of characters includes Virginia Woolf and Alice James, the poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson, John Ruskin’s lost love Rose la Touche, the artist Louise Bourgeois and the nurse Florence Nightingale. Suffused with a generative, transcendent rage, Alice Hattrick’s genre-bending debut is a moving and defiant exploration of life with a medically unexplained illness."[2] (source: Fitzcarraldo Editions)

Reception[edit | edit source]

Online presence[edit | edit source]

See also[edit | edit source]

Learn more[edit | edit source]

References[edit | edit source]

  1. Taylor, Jonathan (August 25, 2021). "Ill Feelings by Alice Hattrick". Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved April 9, 2022.
  2. https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/ill-feelings