Cardboard: A woman left for dead is a ficto-critical 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.
A university student, Lucy falls ill while on a coach trip in Europe. Ashen, thin and with a thready heartbeat, she 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. In her tiny hotel room Lucy wonders what she should do? Is she really 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. Lucy is now a patient. And unknowingly enters into a dynamic and powerful struggle over the ownership of her life's narrative.
Hospitalized she undergoes a range of treatments - some harsh, some ineffective, others insightful and intelligent. Cleverly observed, Lucy invites the reader to make sense of what it means to be ill. To understand why it is so difficult for her to eat. And as she fleshes out her journey towards recovery, demands her distress be understood. Demands it be put into her own words.
When it was first published by Local Consumption Publications 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 prize-winning novel continues to provide an understanding of the individual's affective experience and the socio-cultural context in which it occurs.
A must read for any one interested in the big questions: Who am I? What do I want?