Review by Booklist Review
Transparent and tormented, Crampton is understandably hypervigilant and fearful of being sick. Diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma at 17 and enduring a later recurrence of the disease, she underwent chemotherapy and received a stem-cell transplant. Yet hypochondria--the constant, extreme belief that something is seriously wrong with the body--shadows and sometimes strangles her everyday life. Crampton's memoir includes an overview of the strange and sad realm of hypochondriasis. Struggling with this ancient malady, hypochondriacs exist in a place of contradictions and shifting boundaries as they migrate between actual illness and imagined sickness. Notable hypochondriacs are acknowledged--Marcel Proust, Charles Darwin, Tennessee Williams, Howard Hughes, and characters in Woody Allen's films. Crampton points out that psychiatry's most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Medical Disorders doesn't even list hypochondriasis, offering illness anxiety disorder or somatic symptom disorder instead. Crampton contemplates magical thinking, the mirage of "certainty," and the suggestive power of medical information garnered from internet websites. She writes, "We are breakable. We are vulnerable. We are baffling." Crampton's assessment of hypochondriacs applies to a wider population. We are all fragile and quirky, and most of us have some level of health anxiety. A truly fascinating foray into the theories, origins, history, and treatment of a too-often maligned disorder that cries out for less judgment and more empathy.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this riveting, genre-bending memoir, journalist Crampton (The Way to the Sea) traces the cultural and historical lineage of hypochondria. Pulling from ancient medical sources, film, literature, and modern psychiatric texts, Crampton attempts to demystify the condition, also known as health anxiety, which she's struggled with for decades. At 17, Crampton was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer and underwent intensive treatment. After doctors told her the cancer had been eradicated, it returned. The experience left Crampton certain that disaster was always around the corner, and here she contextualizes her persistent anxiety with discussions of Marcel Proust's potentially psychosomatic asthma, the allure of googling one's symptoms, and more. Seamlessly blending personal narrative with cultural investigation, Crampton traces the evolution of hypochondria from a physiological diagnosis in ancient Greece to a psychological one in contemporary culture, and links the ever-questioning sufferers of the condition to other knowledge-seekers throughout popular history, including Charles Darwin and Virginia Woolf, whose own hypochondriac tendencies were sometimes attributed to their "brilliant but overactive" minds. "Hypochondria only has questions," Crampton writes, "never answers," and her narrative follows suit, delivering few concrete takeaways. Still, it's a stimulating and rigorous take on a slippery subject. Agent: Amelia Atlas, CAA. (Apr.)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An up-to-date study of hypochondria, which has been around for centuries but has become more widespread in the digital age. In her adolescent years, Crampton, author of The Way to the Sea, had a serious encounter with blood cancer. After grueling treatment, she recovered, but the experience left her with hypochondria, the elusive and exhausting feeling that every minor pain or change in her body was a sign of approaching disaster. This book is her attempt to understand the condition. As she embarked on her research, the author discovered that the condition is surprisingly common. At the most intense end of the scale are people whose lives have become severely limited, to the point that they will hardly leave their rooms for fear of contagion. At another level are those who will try any potion or procedure to cure an ailment that is entirely imaginary. Some hypochondriacs will begin to believe they have an illness because they have read about it or seen a documentary on it. The internet has been a major contributor to this phenomenon, writes the author. A "cyberchondriac," she notes, "gets trapped in a never-ending spiral of increasingly doom-laden internet searches." The rise of social media has seen the proliferation of so-called wellness specialists, who provide a remedy for whatever it is a person with a credit card thinks they have. As Crampton shows, there are serious attempts to treat hypochondria underway, and methods related to treatment for PTSD show promise. However, a real understanding of the condition is a long way off. As for herself, Crampton believes that writing the book provided valuable perspective and insight into her own struggles. "I am ill and I am well," she concludes. "I am still here." Poetic and personal, this book reveals a condition that is debilitating and often hidden. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
