Ill Feelings

Alice Hattrick [Fitzcarraldo]

Encompassing personal and archival histories of the medically unexplained illness Myalgic Encephalomyeilitis (a.k.a. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome), Alice Hattrick’s Ill Feelings defiantly takes on the task of refusing to explain. Instead, she provides a moving, angry account of the experience of being ill.

This is an entangled (auto)biography of Alice and their mother, both of whom have suffered for years with a raft of symptoms with no apparent physical cause. Their experiences mirror one another and yet mother and daughter wish to be understood apart; to be taken seriously both for and in spite of their ‘ill feelings’. Their case histories are intertwined with medical historical discourse in an illuminating journey through the attitudes, dismissals and halfhearted research which have surrounded ME for decades. If anything positive can be said for our present pandemic moment, it’s that attention is finally being given to the kind of post-viral conditions from which Alice, their mother, and I myself, have suffered for years.

As someone who has spent much of my limited energy fighting for my illness to be recognized by doctors and society alike, this is a heartening read. Also entering the conversation through diaries and letters are friends from long ago, a girl gang of women with ‘ill feelings’ – Virginia Woolf, Alice James, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson, Louise Bourgeois, and Florence Nightingale – all searching for language to proclaim that we are ill, not hysterical; that we are not invisible. HC