‘Ill Feelings defies neat conclusions as well as easy categorisation of the book itself, so that attempting to describe it here seems like misdiagnosis, and to try and name the paradox at its heart seems like a betrayal of its rewards. But the thrill of Alice Hattrick's writing stems from its struggle to be free of its constraints, communicating with unspooling fury the mutability of lived experience rather than presuming to define it. In doing so, they remind us that the undefined — our own ill feelings — reveals not weakness so much as our inherent capacity for resistance.’
Olivia Sudjic, author of Exposure
‘I read Ill Feelings with a sense of wonder at the courage required not just to live with a medically unexplained illness, but to write about it with such descriptive clarity and probing intelligence. Alice Hattrick's book is a powerful cure for ignorance or indifference about a complex form of suffering.’
Edmund Gordon, author of The Invention of Angela Carter
‘Ill Feelings is a necessary, urgent book that I feel I have been waiting my whole life to read. A beautiful combination of memoir, reportage and razor-sharp analysis, it made me think very deeply and critically and feel powerfully understood all at once — a testament to what truly accomplished nonfiction writers can achieve. This book makes me excited for the future of literary nonfiction writing and its power to change the world and how we see it.’
Lucia Osborne-Crowley, author of My Body Keeps Your Secret
‘“Poetry is not the same to the ill, the clouds look different, and so too does the rest of nature.” Alice Hattrick brilliantly geographies sick time and ill feelings. They chronicle not just how pain is located in the body but how it stretches outside of itself, across time and generations, through society and literature. The weight or unweight that is given to it; how disabled voices are heard (or not heard); the toxic way society views unrecovery. This book, and others like it, are always needed, but this feels especially needed right now, when 60 per cent of those who have died of COVID-19 in England have been disabled, and online disability hate crime has risen 46 per cent.'
Jen Campbell, author of The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night
‘What's most refreshing, most remarkable about Ill Feelings is the undercurrent of anger that ripples through it … furious and fascinating.’
Fiona Wright, author of Small Acts of Disappearance
‘Ill Feelings offers spellbinding reality unlike anything I have ever read. It conquers the sense of grief that we have to learn to live with; this deep guttural fear in humanity is addressed compassionately.’
Billie Ingram Sofokleous, Buzz Magazine
‘Hattrick’s ability to reflect life with ME in form and language is complex and brilliant. The structure of Ill Feelings appears initially as haphazard, perhaps, but the more you read, the more it clarifies: this is not a book of simple narrative, of gradual progression. The chapters shift around in both tone and environment. [W]hile Hattrick does not use a normative plot structure, while they do not stick to one manifestation, there is a clear message: when we define another as ‘disabled’, we are discounting their life and their applicability to what we call progress … Capitalism is closing the borders of language around us, and in so doing, is narrowing the human experience down to a sharp, ableist point.’
Connor Harrison, Review 31
‘Happily, Hattrick, in addition to being a gifted writer, is a fierce advocate for their own instinctive understanding of their body, with one of Ill Feelings' most radical qualities being its unabashed anger.’
Philippa Snow, Brixton Review of Books
‘Ill Feelings belongs on the shelf with Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor, Ben Watts’ Patient, Ann Boyer’s The Undying, and Jenn Ashworth’s Notes Made While Falling, because, quite simply, it’s that good.’
Steven Long, The Crack Magazine
‘Here Hattrick … presents a swirling personal narrative including reflections on their own chronic illness, meditations on their relationship with their mother, and comments on the current state of medical research along with investigations into the lives of historical ill women.’
Alexander Wells, Exberliner
‘[T]hough Hattrick may eschew normative structure in illness narratives, they bring about a beautiful ending in Ill Feelings… Hattrick’s imbrication of memoir, essay, and literature review … shows that cruelty and didactic therapies are not a response to medicine’s inability to heal. The fluidity they bring to the writing of illness narrative demonstrates there are ways of knowing that do not necessitate ostracising those who are sick.’
Peter Endicott, The Polyphony
‘Alice Hattrick bears fascinating witness to the arduous burden of sickness and chronic infirmity. It is a deeply personal, thoroughly researched, philosophical memoir … Hattrick’s multi-faceted, poetically drawn account elevates the traditional illness narrative.’
Kathleen Gerrard, Shelf Awareness
