Reviews - The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness: A Memoir

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344 reviews for:

The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness: A Memoir

Hoo boy, this book was a trip. It was deeply unpleasant, bordering on body horror. The author went through so much terrible stuff. I appreciate that this book was her way of documenting what happened to her and trying to help others like her.

For intentions, I’d say it was great. For execution, not so much. Ramey’s writing was verbose and repetitive. She overused phrases like “quite literally” and “let us be clear.” The book goes on and on and on, way past the point of being interesting or helpful. If it were a lot shorter it would have been a lot better.

What I learned from this book:

1. Doctors can be monsters, particularly to women with mysterious illnesses. Even for someone like the author who is rich, thin, pretty, white, and well educated, doctors can and will treat them like shit and get away with it.

2. Mainstream medicine in the US is good at attacking disease and destroying acute illness. It’s not very good at gently caring for chronically ill people. Ramey describes this as a masculine/feminine or yin/yang thing.

3. The best diet is JERF: Just Eat Real Food. (Sounds true.) The best medicine is Functional Medicine or integrative medicine. (Though FM sounds hella shady if you read about it from other sources.)

Ok, now for the criticisms:

1. I listened to the audiobook, so maybe the print edition is different, but it seemed like she didn’t cite any of the scientific studies she based her conclusions on.

2. I think Ramey comes off as ableist because she talks about disability in such a negative way. She says she wants to be normal, wear normal clothes, do normal things, etc. It's like her vibe is "being disabled sucks" instead of "shaming and excluding disabled people sucks." She does find her way to accepting being disabled. By the end of her story, she has discovered accommodations and a more inclusive community. I still see this as a valid criticism, though, because Ramey doesn't address her ableism in the text.

I read a lot of reviews criticizing Sarah Ramey for not addressing her privilege, but she definitely does address it. A few reviews accused her of sounding like a TERF, but I didn't get that. When discussing an approach to illness that is masculine vs. feminine or hero vs. heroine, Ramey is talking about cultural concepts that exist because of patriarchy and misogyny. Those things are real. It is not transphobic to talk about them.

Overall, I think this would have been a much better book if it had been all memoir and no manifesto, but I understand why Ramey felt called to offer a lot of advice and make grand insights into how we got here and how to change things.