Book: There’s Nothing Wrong With Her by Kate Weinberg

There was an interview with Kate Weinberg on New Zealand radio this morning.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/prog...g-finding-the-funny-side-of-invisible-illness
She notes that she is much better but is not fully recovered.

The book might be good, but I think I would find it a difficult read as I'd be constantly on the alert for positions on post-infection disease that I don't agree with. I was like that during the interview too. And there was quite a lot of ambiguity that could concern, if that is your mindset. Things like referring to the illness as 'the pit', a la the Lightning Process, and the expressed hope that her book will help people who are stuck, not just with chronic illness but stuck in things like grief too, how it will help people to move on. And there was the suggestion that writing the book helped her recovery (rather than recovering then enabling the book writing).

I think part of the problem is that the sort of people who write books based on their chronic illness are often looking for metaphors, and want an engaging story arc 'protagonist suffers, protagonist overcomes the challenge as a result of her own hard work and determination, protagonist finds value in having gone through such a challenging time'. I guess, actually, that tendency is a human one, it makes a good story, a much better one than 'protagonist suffers, protagonist keeps suffering, protagonist finds a few ways to make things less bad, but protagonist keeps suffering'.

There was talk of various things that helped with her recovery, positive thinking, vitamin B3.

The book is promoted as 'finding the funny side of invisible illness'. I didn't hear anything funny in the interview. The reviewer in the first post found the pet goldfish to be 'brilliantly named' as Whitney Houston and, when asked about the name in the interview, Weinberg says the name was to signal to the reader that the book would be a good time, not depressing. But, I don't get the joke. She says that the goldfish is a metaphor for her brain, how she was constantly forgetting things.

As I said, the book may be fine and Kate Weinberg came across as someone trying to be honest and trying to help rather than harm. Others have said before, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, there should be a ban on people writing about their experience of post-infection illness and ME/CFS, perhaps even being interviewed publicly, until 5 years after the illness onset. I think there is something to recommend such a policy. It wouldn't help sell books though.

 

https://www.unibooks.co.nz/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=180802
Excerpts from a promotional blurb about the book, bolding mine:

'The best thing you'll read this year' KILEY REID 'So beautiful' SARAH JESSICA PARKER 'One of those books I will read again and again' JOJO MOYES 'Moving, absorbing, evocative' SARA COLLINS A crackling, comical, tender, and highly original novel about mental health, the certainties of medicine, buried trauma, love, death and time lost in the crushing - and comical - hopes of modern life

_______________________________________________________ Vita Woods is on the brink. She has a good job and a successful doctor boyfriend, Max, with whom the sex is great and the chat sufficient; a vivacious and charming sister Gracie, her verbal sparring partner and best friend for life; and she's even got a goldfish called Whitney Houston, who brightens her days by showing her she's not the only one going round in circles. Because it's the days that are Vita's problem. Vita is not leaving the house. In fact, Vita rarely exits the basement apartment where she lives, since Vita is in "The Pit" - a place of deep exhaustion and semi-consciousness where she spends much of her time, dead to the world and to herself. She has been sick for months, with an illness that no doctor, not even Max, can medically diagnose.

One day an unexpected courier delivery forces Vita upstairs, into the light - and into a chance encounter with her neighbours upstairs. Suddenly, Vita finds herself faced with an even trickier dilemma. She likes her new friends; she'll even sneak upstairs to see them while Max is out, against all medical advice but something about her "condition" is nagging at the borders of her mind. After all, what is a house-bound girl to do when she can't keep the light, her new friendships, or - worst of all - her memories out? The problem might be Vita herself but as far as anyone can prove... there's nothing wrong with her. 'Encompasses so many things: a whole life - sorrows, damage, hopes' RICHARD CURTIS 'Surreal, magical, totally original' SATHNAM SANGHERA 'Deep and dark and beautiful'

 

Oh. Thank you.