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Ill Feelings
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.
356 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 25, 2021
71 people are currently reading
1632 people want to read
About the author
Alice Hattrick
2 books17 followersAlice Hattrick is a writer based in London. Their recent work has been included in HEALTH: Documents of Contemporary Art, edited by Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz (Whitechapel/MIT, 2020) and Mine Searching Yours (Forma, 2020). Their essays, interviews and criticism have been published by The White Review, Frieze, Art Review and Rhizome among other publications, and included in events at institutions such as ICA London (‘On Cripping’), Raven Row (‘Sick Time is Resist Time’), the Barbican (New Suns Festival) and the Goldsmiths Centre of Feminist Research. Alice is also the co-producer of Access Docs for Artists, a resource for disabled and/or chronically ill artists, curators and writers, made in collaboration with artists Leah Clements and Lizzy Rose, for which they were named on The Innovator’s List for 2020 (Artnet Intelligence Report). Alice studied at the Royal College of Art and the Courtauld Institute of Art, and teaches criticism at the London College of Fashion.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
May 10, 2022
When Alice Hattrick was a child their mother developed a complex form of pneumonia, her health, her sense of well-being would never be the same again. Later Alice too developed similar, debilitating symptoms, that eventually became chronic. Both mother and daughter were broadly diagnosed with ME/CFS but not before being accused of malingering or indulging in some form of mutual hysteria. Accusations designed to suggest that their illnesses were imagined or manufactured in some way or to force them to “snap out of it.”. Hattrick mingles memoir with literary and cultural criticism to explore the territory of being someone with ill feelings. Hattrick brings in material from diaries, letters and other sources that chronicles the lives of women who’ve occupied similar spaces: from Alice James and Louise Bourgeois to Virginia Woolf. The women selected are, mostly, like Hattrick and their mother queer. Their shared gender’s a particularly significant factor, as Hattrick quite rightly maintains, many women over the course of their lifespan will experience illness that doctors will either fail to recognise or seek to explain away - at best they may be directed towards strategies for overcoming their bodily sensations that are designed more to fit dominant, ableist agendas than cater to their actual needs. In a society, where even conditions that conform to current medical conceptions of what's counted as legitimately unwell, such as heart disease and heart attack, are routinely misdiagnosed in women, Hattrick’s experience and their conclusions are all too believable and often horribly familiar.
Hattrick acknowledges a debt to the work of theorists like Susan Sontag, particularly her stance in Illness as Metaphor Hattrick too goes beyond the individual to look at the cultural myths surrounding illness, as well as concepts of medical ethics. They probe the political and other vested interests that can make the difference between someone being taken seriously and being dismissed out of hand; interests that often dictate what forms of illness will be deemed worthy of funding and research and which ignored. It’s evident that the mainstream medical profession has a topsy-turvy approach to patients, the patient’s body is required to conform to its models and frameworks, rather than the other way around. Alongside these pressing concerns, Hattrick constructs a searing portrait of what it is to go through each day faced with unrelieved symptoms. Ones that impact on every aspect of their existence but don’t fit the standard narratives: from grappling with the exhaustive requirements of punitive bureaucracies, ones which determine whether or not support will be made available; to the impact of ill feelings on how time's processed and felt in the body. It’s an exceptionally well-researched, illuminating and deeply sobering account, although I found some of the sections dealing with the minutiae of medical studies into ME/CFS a little dense, and sometimes difficult to absorb.
Thanks to Edelweiss and publisher Feminist Press at CUNY for an ARC
Ratings: 3.5
Hattrick acknowledges a debt to the work of theorists like Susan Sontag, particularly her stance in Illness as Metaphor Hattrick too goes beyond the individual to look at the cultural myths surrounding illness, as well as concepts of medical ethics. They probe the political and other vested interests that can make the difference between someone being taken seriously and being dismissed out of hand; interests that often dictate what forms of illness will be deemed worthy of funding and research and which ignored. It’s evident that the mainstream medical profession has a topsy-turvy approach to patients, the patient’s body is required to conform to its models and frameworks, rather than the other way around. Alongside these pressing concerns, Hattrick constructs a searing portrait of what it is to go through each day faced with unrelieved symptoms. Ones that impact on every aspect of their existence but don’t fit the standard narratives: from grappling with the exhaustive requirements of punitive bureaucracies, ones which determine whether or not support will be made available; to the impact of ill feelings on how time's processed and felt in the body. It’s an exceptionally well-researched, illuminating and deeply sobering account, although I found some of the sections dealing with the minutiae of medical studies into ME/CFS a little dense, and sometimes difficult to absorb.
Thanks to Edelweiss and publisher Feminist Press at CUNY for an ARC
Ratings: 3.5
October 10, 2021
I loved Hattrick’s insight and ideas in Ill Feelings. She gave me a lot to chew on; I’ve scribbled down notes like “the structure of medical care is based on mistrust“, and “the experience of illness and the experience of medicalisation are linked, but not the same”. I was hoping, though, for more of a case study format, which might have made the various narrative threads easier to follow. I’ll admit I embraced the skim for some dense sections of medical jargon. Ill Feelings is not an easy read, but it’s an interesting and worthwhile one for anyone interested in the intersection of gender and disability.
My full review of Ill Feelings can be found on Keeping Up With The Penguins.
My full review of Ill Feelings can be found on Keeping Up With The Penguins.
December 1, 2021
(3.5) “My mother and I have symptoms of illness without any known cause,” Hattrick writes. When they showed signs of the ME/CFS their mother had suffered from since 1995, it was assumed there was imitation going on – that a “shared hysterical language” was fuelling their continued infirmity. It didn’t help that both looked well, so could pass as normal despite debilitating fatigue. Into their own family’s story, Hattrick weaves the lives and writings of chronically ill women such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning (see my review of Fiona Sampson’s biography, Two-Way Mirror), Alice James and Virginia Woolf. All these figures knew that what Hattrick calls “crip time” is different: more elastic; about survival rather than achievement.
The book searches desultorily for answers – could this have something to do with Giardiasis at age two? – but ultimately rests in mystery. ME/CFS patients rarely experience magical recovery, instead exhibiting repeated cycles of illness and being ‘well enough’. Hattrick also briefly considers long Covid as another form of postviral syndrome. My mother had fibromyalgia for years, so I’m always interested to read more about related illnesses. Earlier in the year I read Tracie White’s Waiting for Superman, and this also reminded me of Suzanne O’Sullivan’s books, though it’s literary and discursive rather than scientific.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
The book searches desultorily for answers – could this have something to do with Giardiasis at age two? – but ultimately rests in mystery. ME/CFS patients rarely experience magical recovery, instead exhibiting repeated cycles of illness and being ‘well enough’. Hattrick also briefly considers long Covid as another form of postviral syndrome. My mother had fibromyalgia for years, so I’m always interested to read more about related illnesses. Earlier in the year I read Tracie White’s Waiting for Superman, and this also reminded me of Suzanne O’Sullivan’s books, though it’s literary and discursive rather than scientific.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
August 12, 2021
Ill Feelings is an important read. Important for many reasons and for many people.
Hattrick weaves the history of her and her mother’s ME/CFS diagnosis with accounts of the same from prominent female figures throughout time, along with the shocking reality and details of the studies into ME/CFS.
The references to studies throughout history make your blood boil as you come to terms with how they are all peppered with issues in medical bureaucracy, political interests and the capitalist desires of those undertaking the studies. With this Hattrick also highlights how these erroneous studies have led to prejudice from able-bodied persons. Studies and treatments which were meant to do good have done what feels like irrecoverable harm in medicine and society, it makes you take a hard look in the mirror.
Ill Feelings closes with hope, not exactly hope of a cure or treatment but of hope of self-acceptance and love.
I encourage all to pick-up this book and better educate yourself on ME/CFS so that we as a society can better support a community that dearly needs it.
{I received an advance copy of this book from Fitzcarraldo Editions - this is my honest review.}
Hattrick weaves the history of her and her mother’s ME/CFS diagnosis with accounts of the same from prominent female figures throughout time, along with the shocking reality and details of the studies into ME/CFS.
The references to studies throughout history make your blood boil as you come to terms with how they are all peppered with issues in medical bureaucracy, political interests and the capitalist desires of those undertaking the studies. With this Hattrick also highlights how these erroneous studies have led to prejudice from able-bodied persons. Studies and treatments which were meant to do good have done what feels like irrecoverable harm in medicine and society, it makes you take a hard look in the mirror.
Ill Feelings closes with hope, not exactly hope of a cure or treatment but of hope of self-acceptance and love.
I encourage all to pick-up this book and better educate yourself on ME/CFS so that we as a society can better support a community that dearly needs it.
{I received an advance copy of this book from Fitzcarraldo Editions - this is my honest review.}
September 12, 2021
There's so much I want to say about this book. As someone with chronic fatigue, I felt seen by Hattrick and it has led to so much reflection over the last few days. I really would recommend. Hattrick is also a wonderful writer, they don't just write with wisdom but also with great skill.
April 22, 2023
"I know it in my body. This is what my mother and I say to each other sometimes, when our knowledge of our own experiences and sensations are dismissed, when we don't know if we have made something up or it really happened, because we are supposed to question that lived reality, to believe it to be fiction, unevidenced and illegitimate. I know it in my body. Our bodies are our archives, the storehouses of our shared knowledge. I know it in her body, and in mine."
"The shame arose in encounters with able people, specifically when their idea of me and my inherent bodily knowledge of my own needs and limitations did not align with their intellectual assumptions. Growing up, I soon found that when I felt too ill to be a 'normal' teenager, I was told I was not deserving of 'special' treatment, and when I behaved as a 'normal' teenager, I betrayed their idea of a sick one. After all, how was I to know what was best for me, I was only a child. But we — disabled people — will always be treated like children."
"Only identifiable diseases get names. Being in a lot of pain is not an identifiable disease — it is a symptom, in this case, without an apparent cause. Pain is almost beyond medicine, beyond the body; Kellgren said that the phenomena of pain belonged to 'that borderland between the body and the soul'. This is the power of diagnosis. It is more than a name. It can be a curse, a wrong thing.
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. [...]
There is a hierarchy of pain, and women's pain is the worst — not objectively worse, they just feel it more. Pain, when it is relayed by women — in a medical context, in any context — is inevitable, insurmountable, and indexes only their gender. Their bodies are speaking out of term, amplifying sensations others find bearable, maybe even negligible. If only these women would stop listening to the pain. They might be able to do what they want to do."
"This is the body I live in, the one I write from, and I read from, and sometimes it is angry. I don't want to be without it, that anger. Sometimes I think I have the right to be angry all the time, the literal expression of the feeling that I want to escape my body, but it is exhausting."
"As Sontag wrote in Illness as Metaphor: 'Psychological theories of illness are a powerful means of placing the blame on the ill. Patients who are instructed that they have, unwittingly, caused their disease are also being made to feel that they have deserved it...Nothing is more punitive than to give a disease a meaning — that meaning invariably being a moral one.'"
"The shame arose in encounters with able people, specifically when their idea of me and my inherent bodily knowledge of my own needs and limitations did not align with their intellectual assumptions. Growing up, I soon found that when I felt too ill to be a 'normal' teenager, I was told I was not deserving of 'special' treatment, and when I behaved as a 'normal' teenager, I betrayed their idea of a sick one. After all, how was I to know what was best for me, I was only a child. But we — disabled people — will always be treated like children."
"Only identifiable diseases get names. Being in a lot of pain is not an identifiable disease — it is a symptom, in this case, without an apparent cause. Pain is almost beyond medicine, beyond the body; Kellgren said that the phenomena of pain belonged to 'that borderland between the body and the soul'. This is the power of diagnosis. It is more than a name. It can be a curse, a wrong thing.
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. [...]
There is a hierarchy of pain, and women's pain is the worst — not objectively worse, they just feel it more. Pain, when it is relayed by women — in a medical context, in any context — is inevitable, insurmountable, and indexes only their gender. Their bodies are speaking out of term, amplifying sensations others find bearable, maybe even negligible. If only these women would stop listening to the pain. They might be able to do what they want to do."
"This is the body I live in, the one I write from, and I read from, and sometimes it is angry. I don't want to be without it, that anger. Sometimes I think I have the right to be angry all the time, the literal expression of the feeling that I want to escape my body, but it is exhausting."
"As Sontag wrote in Illness as Metaphor: 'Psychological theories of illness are a powerful means of placing the blame on the ill. Patients who are instructed that they have, unwittingly, caused their disease are also being made to feel that they have deserved it...Nothing is more punitive than to give a disease a meaning — that meaning invariably being a moral one.'"
February 5, 2022
Alice Hattrick and their mother both have been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Alice Hattrick's illness began in childhood, when their mother was also ill, and they struggled to keep up with school, exercise and the general rigours of every day life. Hattrick began to get better in early adulthood, and then developed more fatigue, pain and "ill feelings". This is not a recovery memoir: Hattrick ends the book as sick as they began; nor is it a guide to living with these problems. It's a study of the history of women's experiences with chronic ill-health, and the ways in which the medical establishment continues to mistreat, ignore or cast aside women's experiences, and the ways in which a capitalist society doesn't allow people to recover, or to live with chronic health conditions. Hattrick looks at the medical history of the conditions labelled ME or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and factors that lead to conditions being labelled hysterical or a product of thinking in the wrong way. Hattrick also explores historical figures who have struggled with lifelong ill-health: Alice James (sister to the novelist Henry), Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Florence Nightingale, and Virginia Woolf. Hattrick explores these women's experiences, and the ways in which they lived fulfilling lives despite their bouts of illness.
Overall, I found this book useful and compelling, as well as very readable. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia ten years ago, so much of what Hattrick is writing about is familiar to me. But there were some avenues which I felt were underexplored -- Hattrick mentions two or three times that people of colour find it much harder to be taken seriously when they are dealing with chronic pain or fatigue, but they don't explore this in any depth, or talk to any POC about their experiences. Hattrick is also at pains to separate fibromyalgia and CFS from mental health problems or trauma. Hattrick asserts that their isn't any true divide between mental and physical health, but is also very careful to steer away from the idea that people with CFS have mental health problems, or that their can be any overlap. As someone who has a diagnosis of PTSD as well as fibromyalgia, I often feel thrown aside by narratives like this: I think my mental health has an impact on my physical health, and vice versa, and other people with CFS or fibromyalgia often seems hostile to this view. I feel like if I bring up my PTSD, I'm letting them down!
But with these caveats, I think this is an important book, a carefully researched study, and a great companion for this of us who have ill feelings.
Overall, I found this book useful and compelling, as well as very readable. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia ten years ago, so much of what Hattrick is writing about is familiar to me. But there were some avenues which I felt were underexplored -- Hattrick mentions two or three times that people of colour find it much harder to be taken seriously when they are dealing with chronic pain or fatigue, but they don't explore this in any depth, or talk to any POC about their experiences. Hattrick is also at pains to separate fibromyalgia and CFS from mental health problems or trauma. Hattrick asserts that their isn't any true divide between mental and physical health, but is also very careful to steer away from the idea that people with CFS have mental health problems, or that their can be any overlap. As someone who has a diagnosis of PTSD as well as fibromyalgia, I often feel thrown aside by narratives like this: I think my mental health has an impact on my physical health, and vice versa, and other people with CFS or fibromyalgia often seems hostile to this view. I feel like if I bring up my PTSD, I'm letting them down!
But with these caveats, I think this is an important book, a carefully researched study, and a great companion for this of us who have ill feelings.
January 18, 2022
I wish I could inject this book into the veins of everyone I know.
October 1, 2021
Alice Hattrick has written a refreshingly personal account of her struggles with the medical profession to obtain a diagnosis and get treated.
As someone who is and has been going through this process for at least the last five years, I feel seen and my feelings of rage and almost defeat validated.
Hattrick has provided a well detailed and researched book which I have underlined, highlighted and written copious notes through out.
Thank you Alice for shining a light on the dismal recognition by the medical profession in regards to ME/CFS and related illnesses.
A big thank you to Scribe Publications for my advance copy
As someone who is and has been going through this process for at least the last five years, I feel seen and my feelings of rage and almost defeat validated.
Hattrick has provided a well detailed and researched book which I have underlined, highlighted and written copious notes through out.
Thank you Alice for shining a light on the dismal recognition by the medical profession in regards to ME/CFS and related illnesses.
A big thank you to Scribe Publications for my advance copy
March 11, 2023
I loved this so, so much. It took me a while to read; partly because I had life things going on, but also because I savoured the shit out of this book. I would recommend this to anyone who likes reading: about the experiences and/or theories of disablity/chronic illness, creative non-fiction, non-linear story telling, medical narratives about people who were AFAB, or any mixture of these.
There were so many good quotes, but here's one near the end that really resonated with me: "Pacing is a form of politicized self-care, an act of resistance against ableist social structures. We find joy through listening and learning from our bodies, of knowing their limits. Occasionally, there is joy when there is also pain."
There were so many good quotes, but here's one near the end that really resonated with me: "Pacing is a form of politicized self-care, an act of resistance against ableist social structures. We find joy through listening and learning from our bodies, of knowing their limits. Occasionally, there is joy when there is also pain."
August 31, 2022
One of my favorite books this year. So powerful and beautifully written.
Read
May 12, 2024i'm not too sure on how to rate this one. the topic of medically unexplained and invisible illness is an important one, the author clearly did extensive research and poured so so much of herself into this memoir/medical history. there're parts that were dense and flew over my head and i wouldn't exactly say it's an 'enjoyable' reading experience but yknow how sometimes when you read a book you get the feeling 'oh im really something important'??? this book is that. would recommend!
January 5, 2023
I feel slightly off-kilter for rating the book: I've read about 2/3 and am setting it aside for now. It's a case where the subject is right up my alley, and the mix of memoir and research is one I usually enjoy. I just struggle to accustom myself to the writing style and structural choices, to the point where I am frequently not enjoying the reading experience.
YMMV.
YMMV.
December 28, 2022
Rating: 3.5
Drawing from various sources of writing that revolves around 'ill feelings' and the experience of being sick due to chronic fatigue syndrome (or ME) and other such illness, Hattrick aims to shed further light onto cases of invisible illnesses which are rarely talked about in the more 'respectable' circles of medicine. Oftentimes, these illnesses would plague women more often than not, and the manifestations of the illnesses are then described and treated as a case of hysteria before said women are then gently imprisoned in a mental institute or some such places for their own 'benefit'. Different century, same story (except recent times have dressed up these institutes to seem more legitimate than the asylums of older times, but come on, let's call it what it is).
I thought this was an interesting compilation of researches and writings on the nature of these invisible illnesses, though I'll be honest I got bored at some of the more 'scholarly' tone of these chapters (if I'd wanted to read nonfiction, I would've picked up a nonfiction). "Ill Feelings" works best when Hattrick focuses on how these illnesses affect her and her surrounding family and friends. That said, this was an illuminating read & an excellent one if you're interested in this sort of subject.
Sickness narratives do not always start with symptoms and end in recovery. Treatment does not always follow test [...] Sick time is not linear time. It is circular. It lapses and relapses, it drags, loops and buffers.
Drawing from various sources of writing that revolves around 'ill feelings' and the experience of being sick due to chronic fatigue syndrome (or ME) and other such illness, Hattrick aims to shed further light onto cases of invisible illnesses which are rarely talked about in the more 'respectable' circles of medicine. Oftentimes, these illnesses would plague women more often than not, and the manifestations of the illnesses are then described and treated as a case of hysteria before said women are then gently imprisoned in a mental institute or some such places for their own 'benefit'. Different century, same story (except recent times have dressed up these institutes to seem more legitimate than the asylums of older times, but come on, let's call it what it is).
I thought this was an interesting compilation of researches and writings on the nature of these invisible illnesses, though I'll be honest I got bored at some of the more 'scholarly' tone of these chapters (if I'd wanted to read nonfiction, I would've picked up a nonfiction). "Ill Feelings" works best when Hattrick focuses on how these illnesses affect her and her surrounding family and friends. That said, this was an illuminating read & an excellent one if you're interested in this sort of subject.
December 27, 2022
This took months to finish bc the historical accounts of rich disabled white women were sooo dense and slow for me. But I really enjoyed Hattrick’s exploration of chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) as it relates to them and their mother. I’m glad I kept reading because their experiences take more of the focus in the second half and that was a much more interesting reading experience.
gifted copy from feminist press!
gifted copy from feminist press!
November 15, 2021
'Sickness narratives do not always start with symptoms and end in recovery. Treatment does not always follow test [...] Sick time is not linear time. It is circular. It lapses and relapses, it drags, loops and buffers.'
.
Ill Feelings by Alice Hattrick, whilst not a perfect book, is a pretty good account of what it's like to be chronically ill, particularly as a young woman. Focusing on ME/CFS, Hattrick draws on her own experience and the writing of well known women like Virginia Woolf, to re-consider concepts such as rest, work and health through a disabled lens. 3.5 stars.
.
Ill Feelings by Alice Hattrick, whilst not a perfect book, is a pretty good account of what it's like to be chronically ill, particularly as a young woman. Focusing on ME/CFS, Hattrick draws on her own experience and the writing of well known women like Virginia Woolf, to re-consider concepts such as rest, work and health through a disabled lens. 3.5 stars.
October 1, 2022
3.5 stars
This book is tricky to review, because at times I wanted to give up reading it; at others I was underlining every other sentence.
I had wanted to read Ill Feelings for a long time, particularly because of the way Hattrick approached the monolith of illness, blending memoir, literary nonfiction, dialogue with sick women of history and medical history, in a way that resisted typical illness narratives. Much of it I did enjoy, and the beginning chapters focusing purely on ME/CFS medical history, the research paths, the various political/social beliefs driving medical opinion over time, etc, were engaging. Towards the middle however, I found myself losing interest. Hattrick's extensive research is brilliant, but at times I think the depth to which they went detracted from the overall text they were producing. The medical history chapters did not draw the reader along as compellingly as Hattrick had done before, and at times, left you totally behind, abruptly thrown out of the flow and overall narrative Hattrick had been weaving. These chapters are dense in medical language and phrasing, with little clarification or explication to the less-aware reader.
The world of illness writing, particularly in the past decade, has become oversaturated with pieces that could have benefited from more time, more research, better editing. Hattrick's text is far from under-researched, and I loved the wealth of illness-archive I gained access to in reading it. The most common problem with published illness writing is the unbearable whiteness of it, and this, unfortuantely, is a failing Hattrick's illness writing does not escape - indeed, shows up itself as a testament to this flaw.
Race as an intersection against/within illness, and structuring of illness experiences was largely nonexistent for much of the text. It wasn't until the final chapters that Hattrick was even addressing their own whiteness explicitly, and the effect this had upon their experiences of illness. This results in a frequent, assumed universalising of the illness experience up until that point. Acknowledgement that there is difference, and those intersections of difference cannot be drawn to make the same points, because of their fundamental difference, is therefore nonexistent.
The only significant point prior to that was on page 73, where Hattrick clumsily, and seemingly as an after thought, introduced race as a factor in 'ill feelings' and differentiator of experience. In discussing illness and the beliefs around subsequent rest as 'decadent' and 'privileged', Hattrick presents the idea that this myth, 'originating' (whether or not this is the case is another discussion in itself) from the 'fragile white woman', "confine[s] some women inside and shut[s] others off from legitimate illness experiences."
Whilst the idea they draw as conclusion - that this false idea confines and exlcudes in equal measure - the way Hattrick relates it to race is clumsy, ignorant, and arrogant. The lack of comfort around the intersections of race and illness is clear, and the work suffers for it. Hattrick follows on from this to state that "The myth of the fragile white woman or girl who takes to her bed harms everyone with a chronic illness; those whose experience is narrativised in this way, and those who are denied access to it, namely people in minority racial and ethnic groups..."
This small allocation to race somehow succeeds in both blurring and erasing much of the difference in realities and experiences - in the very substance of 'ill feelings' that Hattrick is concerned with - whilst also patronising those 'minority racial and ethnic groups' by presenting the idea that it is from the harm created to white women, that minorities experience their own harms, compressing the complexities of race and whiteness into a claim that undermines Hattrick's earlier insights. Illness myths do harm all - but it is not illness myths about white women in particular, that harm me, as someone who is black and disabled.
This is an embarassing flaw. This is not an intentional failing by Hattrick; indeed, going by the clear lack of understanding around race and illness, I do not think Hattrick saw it at all. It is particularly unfortunate that this is one of the most prominent engagements with race and illness in the entire book.
The final chapters of Ill Feelings is where it all began to fly for me; where all the threads Hattrick had been weaving came together. These were some of the strongest parts for me, and some of the most incisive on the concept of 'ill feelings', and the experience of illness/disability as a whole.
Whilst there are some considerable flaws in the book, this is not unique to Hattrick's text - it is a problem symptomatic of illness publishing as a whole. Hattrick's book provides worthy insights, and particularly for those with ME/CFS, a powerful account of the failings of medicine to address their ill feelings. I know I will read it again, if not in full, and I know I will recommend it to fellow crips (though perhaps with a few caveats).
This book is tricky to review, because at times I wanted to give up reading it; at others I was underlining every other sentence.
I had wanted to read Ill Feelings for a long time, particularly because of the way Hattrick approached the monolith of illness, blending memoir, literary nonfiction, dialogue with sick women of history and medical history, in a way that resisted typical illness narratives. Much of it I did enjoy, and the beginning chapters focusing purely on ME/CFS medical history, the research paths, the various political/social beliefs driving medical opinion over time, etc, were engaging. Towards the middle however, I found myself losing interest. Hattrick's extensive research is brilliant, but at times I think the depth to which they went detracted from the overall text they were producing. The medical history chapters did not draw the reader along as compellingly as Hattrick had done before, and at times, left you totally behind, abruptly thrown out of the flow and overall narrative Hattrick had been weaving. These chapters are dense in medical language and phrasing, with little clarification or explication to the less-aware reader.
The world of illness writing, particularly in the past decade, has become oversaturated with pieces that could have benefited from more time, more research, better editing. Hattrick's text is far from under-researched, and I loved the wealth of illness-archive I gained access to in reading it. The most common problem with published illness writing is the unbearable whiteness of it, and this, unfortuantely, is a failing Hattrick's illness writing does not escape - indeed, shows up itself as a testament to this flaw.
Race as an intersection against/within illness, and structuring of illness experiences was largely nonexistent for much of the text. It wasn't until the final chapters that Hattrick was even addressing their own whiteness explicitly, and the effect this had upon their experiences of illness. This results in a frequent, assumed universalising of the illness experience up until that point. Acknowledgement that there is difference, and those intersections of difference cannot be drawn to make the same points, because of their fundamental difference, is therefore nonexistent.
The only significant point prior to that was on page 73, where Hattrick clumsily, and seemingly as an after thought, introduced race as a factor in 'ill feelings' and differentiator of experience. In discussing illness and the beliefs around subsequent rest as 'decadent' and 'privileged', Hattrick presents the idea that this myth, 'originating' (whether or not this is the case is another discussion in itself) from the 'fragile white woman', "confine[s] some women inside and shut[s] others off from legitimate illness experiences."
Whilst the idea they draw as conclusion - that this false idea confines and exlcudes in equal measure - the way Hattrick relates it to race is clumsy, ignorant, and arrogant. The lack of comfort around the intersections of race and illness is clear, and the work suffers for it. Hattrick follows on from this to state that "The myth of the fragile white woman or girl who takes to her bed harms everyone with a chronic illness; those whose experience is narrativised in this way, and those who are denied access to it, namely people in minority racial and ethnic groups..."
This small allocation to race somehow succeeds in both blurring and erasing much of the difference in realities and experiences - in the very substance of 'ill feelings' that Hattrick is concerned with - whilst also patronising those 'minority racial and ethnic groups' by presenting the idea that it is from the harm created to white women, that minorities experience their own harms, compressing the complexities of race and whiteness into a claim that undermines Hattrick's earlier insights. Illness myths do harm all - but it is not illness myths about white women in particular, that harm me, as someone who is black and disabled.
This is an embarassing flaw. This is not an intentional failing by Hattrick; indeed, going by the clear lack of understanding around race and illness, I do not think Hattrick saw it at all. It is particularly unfortunate that this is one of the most prominent engagements with race and illness in the entire book.
The final chapters of Ill Feelings is where it all began to fly for me; where all the threads Hattrick had been weaving came together. These were some of the strongest parts for me, and some of the most incisive on the concept of 'ill feelings', and the experience of illness/disability as a whole.
Whilst there are some considerable flaws in the book, this is not unique to Hattrick's text - it is a problem symptomatic of illness publishing as a whole. Hattrick's book provides worthy insights, and particularly for those with ME/CFS, a powerful account of the failings of medicine to address their ill feelings. I know I will read it again, if not in full, and I know I will recommend it to fellow crips (though perhaps with a few caveats).
August 7, 2025
This was so completely not what I thought it would be. I was expecting a story and it was basically just one giant essay on chronic fatigue. Learnt a lot but was so irrelevant to me and sooooooo repetitive
July 6, 2022
I wanted to love this, and in many ways did, but also found it a bit inscrutable. Loved the final two chapters, which go into the contradictions of the Covid-19 response and attitudes around stay at home orders and long covid in the context of ableism and neoliberalism. I coincidentally have been dealing with a very ME/CFS-like postviral illness since about May 2020 (not COVID, it wasn’t really around then here) and am just now starting to feel okay, so there’s lots to relate to there.
March 16, 2022
I seriously spent one third of Ill Feelings wondering if Fitzcarraldo had mistakenly printed the first draft Alice Hattrick sent them
July 2, 2022
Insightful!
February 20, 2023
weaving together her personal experiences, medical literature, and writings of female literary icons, hattrick produces a book on chronic illness, disability, and mother-daughter relationship that i am begging everyone else to read.
i cannot review this without talking about myself. as someone with hearing disability, and kidney problems whose maintenance meds make me feel lacking of energy most of the time, reading this felt like a release, while offering me language to explain just how it sucks to live like this not because of the disability/illness per se, but because of how society treats you once you're deemed not fit to live the ~standard way.
ill feelings is aptly titled, it referring to chronic illness as well as to the resentment chronically ill/disabled people feel towards society, medical practitioners, families, and ourselves for the way our experiences and pain are being downplayed or dismissed; for the "structure of care" we receive which is almost always "built on mistrust". like we're being watched not out of care but out of suspicion that we're faking itㅡbecause we're women, it looks like. the discrimination on chronically ill/disabled women and misogyny are inseparable issues.
i'm gonna have to sit on my feelings and try to expound more just how this book hit too close to home. i remember watching a documentary unrest so it was easier getting into this having a bit of a background knowledge on ME/CFS. i cannot recommend this enough.
i cannot review this without talking about myself. as someone with hearing disability, and kidney problems whose maintenance meds make me feel lacking of energy most of the time, reading this felt like a release, while offering me language to explain just how it sucks to live like this not because of the disability/illness per se, but because of how society treats you once you're deemed not fit to live the ~standard way.
ill feelings is aptly titled, it referring to chronic illness as well as to the resentment chronically ill/disabled people feel towards society, medical practitioners, families, and ourselves for the way our experiences and pain are being downplayed or dismissed; for the "structure of care" we receive which is almost always "built on mistrust". like we're being watched not out of care but out of suspicion that we're faking itㅡbecause we're women, it looks like. the discrimination on chronically ill/disabled women and misogyny are inseparable issues.
i'm gonna have to sit on my feelings and try to expound more just how this book hit too close to home. i remember watching a documentary unrest so it was easier getting into this having a bit of a background knowledge on ME/CFS. i cannot recommend this enough.
January 16, 2025
“How do you unlearn that ill feelings are bad?” Alice Hattrick’s extended essay, Ill Feelings, offers up a thorough review of chronic fatigue syndrome — its signs and symptoms, its history as a diagnosable illness, its difficulty and its future. They also plumb the depths of their experience and their mother’s, as well as womxn throughout history, literature, art etc., to illustrate how the healthcare systems and institutions of the world are prejudiced against so-called ‘invisible illnesses’, against the woman who so often suffer from them, ‘invisible’ largely because sufferers are part of a maligned, sidelined people. Hattrick considers the issue of class alongside gender in receiving care and being perceived as ‘legitimately’ sick; they also explore how wellness seems unattainable under capitalism. Blending personal memoir with literary non-fiction, Hattrick notes the cost of writing about illness: financial, mental, physical. And they do all of this with such narrative dexterity and linguistic grace, as when they write: “Our bodies are our archives, the storehouses of our shared knowledge. I know it in her body, and in mine.” I valued the insight into pharmacotherapy, the GAD-7 and PHQ-9 tests, and (on a different level) the ways in which people treat those who are confined to bed as somehow luxurious. And, maybe most valuable, their reflections on time — on what it means to truly embody chronic: “I live in sick time, inside my loop of pain.”
February 5, 2023
"Diagnosis - a 'tool and a weapon' - legitimizes some pain as real and others as psychosomatic, the choice of a privileged woman. It draws borders and boundaries between the mind and the body and has political and cultural power."
Existe neste livro uma extensa pesquisa científica e perspectiva histórica (passando por F. Nightingale, V. Woolf, S. Sontag) sobre o que é viver com uma doença "invisível", misteriosa e causadora de tão marcada morbilidade como a encefalomielite miálgica / síndrome da fadiga crónica. É uma doença-pesadelo para muitos médicos e os doentes são deixados décadas a fio sem qualquer resposta para as suas necessidades. Neste aspecto, "Ill Feelings" é angustiante pois confronta-nos também com a descredibilização e falta de empatia generalizada por estes doentes, que padecem de um mal sem causa definida, sem critérios de diagnóstico convincentes (apesar de existir alguma estandardização dos mesmos, mas com nítidos vieses) e sem cura.
Contudo, como ponto menos positivo, considero alguns dos capítulos tão pessoais e/ou descritivos que a sua leitura acaba por se tornar cansativa.
Existe neste livro uma extensa pesquisa científica e perspectiva histórica (passando por F. Nightingale, V. Woolf, S. Sontag) sobre o que é viver com uma doença "invisível", misteriosa e causadora de tão marcada morbilidade como a encefalomielite miálgica / síndrome da fadiga crónica. É uma doença-pesadelo para muitos médicos e os doentes são deixados décadas a fio sem qualquer resposta para as suas necessidades. Neste aspecto, "Ill Feelings" é angustiante pois confronta-nos também com a descredibilização e falta de empatia generalizada por estes doentes, que padecem de um mal sem causa definida, sem critérios de diagnóstico convincentes (apesar de existir alguma estandardização dos mesmos, mas com nítidos vieses) e sem cura.
Contudo, como ponto menos positivo, considero alguns dos capítulos tão pessoais e/ou descritivos que a sua leitura acaba por se tornar cansativa.
February 7, 2023
I havn't actually finished this book and I have started it over again a few times. I really wanted to review it now. Having recently been diagnosed with ME/CFS something I have been struggling on and off with for many years it really speaks to me and makes me feel understood in a way I love how a book can. The book is quite dense in places and complex for people with brain fog and concentration issues so I'd take that into consideration. It is however well researched and well argued in the sections this is relevant. It also is auto biographical and takes you on hers but her mothers own journey with illness that the medical profession doesn't understand in a deeply personal and honest way.( Side note my current experience with the NHS however are much more positive than what Hattrick describes of her youth). It has made me think deeply about my experiences, particularly of the medical world and within my own body. It has made me feel extremely validated. The part about crip time was incredible and I have re-read that part many times, it resonates with me so well. It articulates an experience of illness and time better than I can explain right now. I highly recommend
March 28, 2023
An excellent meditation on illness that blurs memoir, notes on medical history and the writing of other women on this topic seamlessly. Thought-provoking and heavy with ideas unfamiliar to those of us who move through the world without much trouble.
The book ends with a few chapters about the Covid pandemic and how the narrative about what victims of circumstance we all were ignores those, whose lives have been confined to their homes before, those who have always been excluded from everyday life.
It is beautifully written and introspective, but maybe a bit too long. There are chapters dedicated to the technical side of illness, medical history and medicine which were hard to get through. However, perhaps that was the point, as they have helped me realise my privilege of being able to live a life free of texts like these.
Will definitely reread
The book ends with a few chapters about the Covid pandemic and how the narrative about what victims of circumstance we all were ignores those, whose lives have been confined to their homes before, those who have always been excluded from everyday life.
It is beautifully written and introspective, but maybe a bit too long. There are chapters dedicated to the technical side of illness, medical history and medicine which were hard to get through. However, perhaps that was the point, as they have helped me realise my privilege of being able to live a life free of texts like these.
Will definitely reread
April 14, 2022
This is an important book, part memoir of living with ME/CFS and part history of the illness and literary history of how literary figures in the past have lived with various health conditions mostly looking at Virginia Woolf and Alice James. This has some interesting parts and is especially important for showing the experience of living with a chronic condition which is not well understood and cannot be treated by modern medicine and how this can lead to some medical professionals thinking that patients are somehow responsible for their own condition. I found some parts of this a bit dull and hard to get through and some parts very interesting, it does also tend to preaching and ranting in some parts which I understand but do not enjoy reading.
October 20, 2021
This book seems to me to be uncatergorisable. This brings both positives and negatives. It really is a unique work, combining memoir and biography with case studies and history. I found it to be very interesting, and was particularly drawn to the author's arguments against ableism. Yet I found the medical history sections to be quite long, and skim-read a lot of them. Sentences full of acronyms run for 12 lines. The structure also feels quite unbalanced. It begins with an enjoyable balance of memoir and history, but these biographical sections (which were the most engaging) drop off about halfway through. Medical history is very important, but it's very heavy stuff and not as engaging.
March 7, 2022
Fascinating read. I myself was diagnosed with ME/CFS 7 months ago so felt personally involved in the story. Made me question my own experience with the illness and how society has failed me. Again another reminder illness has been made political as with COVID 19 virus; politicians not caring about disabled, poor and POC people. Virgina Woolf's and Florence Nightingales experiences with illness were woven into the story (and many other women throughout history) which was fascinating again making it yet again another sexist problem. Worth a read!
March 11, 2025
so i might be biased as Alice was my absolute favorite tutor at uni and i used to consider them to be an exceptional and almost magical individual even way before reading this, but honestly this is such a good and complex book, planning on re reading this one soon mostly to do it justice and write a proper review on here —
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