A remarkable non fiction I’ve read recently is Alice Hattrick’s Ill Feelings, Published by Fitzcarraldo Editions. This is a deeply personal debut by Alice Hattrick about their diagnosis with ME or Chronic Illness.
The remarkable thing about this book is that this title Ill feelings doesn’t constitute towards only the author’s life but the author in connection with the search within herself takes us into the lives of so many women in the past like Virginia Woolf, Alice James, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and so many more.
“If my ill feelings are a symptom of the human condition, why do I feel them more, or have a lower tolerance of them? Isn’t everyone in pain? Isn’t that what makes us human? Except, of course, I am not human, I am also gendered”
The writing is sublime and the subject was an eye opener for me, about which we know very little about.
The author dips their head into the past while being stuck in the present whilst uncovering every information they can and clearing every misunderstanding or assumptions about the illness till present Covid 19 pandemic.
So I think this is a book that truly had to written and there could not have been a perfect time to read this brilliant book.
Ill feelings by Alice Hattrick. Published by Fitzcarraldo Editions. A huge thanks to Fitzcarraldo Editions for the copy.
Allaying Art 