Cardboard: A woman left for dead is an account of one woman's life-threatening eating disorder and her eventual hard-won recovery.Author Fiona Place has created Lucy, a narrator who is capable of taking the reader inside the dark and often puzzling experience of anorexia nervosa. Ashen, thin and with a thready heartbeat, Lucy cannot understand what is wrong with her. The tour leader decides she is homesick. And lying on her bed, she is left to fend for herself. Alone in her tiny hotel room Lucy wonders what she should do? Is she sick or just homesick? Reluctantly, she decides to fly to an English speaking country. And to her embarrassment is taken off the plane in a wheelchair. Hospitalized, she undergoes a range of treatments - some harsh, some ineffective, others insightful and intelligent.
An astute observer, Lucy invites the reader to make sense of what it means to be ill. To understand why eating is so impossible. And as she fleshes out her journey towards a full-bodied and robust recovery, demands her distress be understood. Demands it be put into her own words. When it was first published Cardboard was recognized as a compelling portrait and one of the first books to understand the importance of the role of narrative in the recovery process. Similarly today when much of the focus on eating disorders concerns decoding the genetics and biology of the condition, this novel continues to provide an understanding of the individual's affective experience and the socio-cultural context in which it occurs.
"An intellectual and psychological tour de force."
Dr Liz Ferrier, Advisory Editor, m/c - a journal of media and culture, Queensland University
"One of the best novels ever to be published in Australia."
Amanda Lohrey, novelist
Learn more at: http://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/resources-books.html.
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