The Long Secret Hunger
Alison Hodge
Publication Date: 01 January 2012 (Review Copies October 2011)
It wasn't just 'losing weight' that mattered to Alison – it was losing flesh, losing her whole physical being. Then – and only then – might she avoid the terrifying prospect so frequently threatened by her mother: that she would "... end up on the scrap-heap".
Alison's compelling auto-biography reveals how this 'promising' thirteen-year-old became entrapped in the turmoil that accompanies – or maybe helps to generate – anorexia, and the tumultuous and bumpy journey away from this 'fate'. Unlike other stories of recovery, Alison's is written many years after finding her 'freedom'. It therefore offers, perhaps, a more reflective, mature and long-term perspective on this ever more widely encountered torment.
"Everyone's life experience tells a story and the pages of this particular story speak to me of the need for all children to be accepted and loved unconditionally for who they are, not for what someone else wishes they should become. It is true that the story tells of intense loneliness and sorrow but, above all, it is a story of hope, that change is possible, despite – or maybe even because of – deep adversity."
Rosie Ball (BAPsych, Psychology Teacher and Parent)
[ISBN 978-1906053-888 / £7.99 / 240 pages approx]