My Oxford

Written for the sister of a man who died from anorexia, this is a young woman's experience of the disorder while studying at the University of Oxford. Catherine Haines' lively account of student life is enriched with literary, philosophical and existential questions. As the Cambridge Weight Plan spins out of control, a post-graduate's academic subject, 'the mind-body problem', goes through an existential phase to become 'extraordinary morality' rather than a mental health problem. The iron will with which Catherine imposes on herself ever more onerous conditions is awe-inspiring. The author is clearly fiercely intelligent, as we can see from the way she exposes the ugly truth behind historical depictions of women with eating disorders and indeed the way society frames abstinence from food as an ally of virtue. However, starving her body means that Catherine also begins to starve her brain. Incisive literary criticism of Hamlet descends into feverish noodlings about Einstein's theory of relativity. Her descriptions enfold the reader in the hideous illogic of the anorexic. This is a rigorous, philosophical case for regarding an eating disorder as pilgrimage. My Oxford is a personal exorcism, the kind which writers perform on paper while fighting with demons, fears, fate and death, an exorcism which, while painful, is also saving.