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A review by libearian217
The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness by Meghan O'Rourke
2.0
I listened to the audiobook for this title, and I'm writing here to sort out my feelings more than anything. I looked into this book after it was listed as a finalist for the National Book Award. Chronic disease and autoimmunity had piqued my interest after years of living in the shadow of COVID, and when I saw that Eula Biss had blurbed it, I figured that it was at least being marketed to readers like me. I loved On Immunity, and in the early chapters, I was happy to hear O'Rourke quote from a book that I'd enjoyed.
But that's about where the similarities stopped. I have no clue what Ms. O'Rourke is like as a person, but as a narrator, at least in this title, I found her unreliable, bourgeois, and-- though I hate to say it-- whiny. Some sections, like those that follow in Sontag's tradition (autoimmunity as metaphor) are smart, well-researched, trenchant analyses of the discourse surrounding autoimmune disorders.
But when scientific research is involved, O'Rourke has a taste for dubious sources and unconventional experts. We get multiple scenes of her trawling online message boards, which, frankly, constitute the bottom of the barrel in information quality. I understand that part of the motive in writing this memoir is to seek understanding outside the confines of Western medicine; to diagnose, as it were, the problems that exist in the dominant system. Sometimes it takes unconventional sources to critique conventional systems. I started this title with a desire to be convinced of the reality of such conditions as chronic Lyme, but somewhere between O'Rourke's ozone therapy and the fecal transplant, I ended up leaving more skeptical than I entered.
O'Rourke's character is often at pains to mention her relative privilege when talking about the healthcare system that she navigates, but as she runs the gamut of New England/ New Age health trends (in one scene, she mentions that a friend is afraid to invite her to dinner because of all the self-imposed dietary restrictions that O'Rourke subscribes to), I left feeling deeply annoyed with this character who chases after every upper-middle class myth of healthy living. The narrator is adamant that her symptoms are not psychosomatic in origin, but at the same time acknowledges that she is experiencing a "grief too large" and symptoms of a depression. I have been treated for bouts of severe depression-- it leads to physiological symptoms similar to the ones that O'Rourke describes, and it almost feels as if, in the quest for an autoimmune diagnosis, O'Rourke is dismissive of psychiatry.
Add to this occasionally less-than-stellar metaphors ("Depleted like a phone running too many apps"), and I can't quite see what people love about this book. That said, I finished it. And some metaphors ("a topiary of nerves") are sticking with me, even if I haven't yet decided whether they're good or bad.
But that's about where the similarities stopped. I have no clue what Ms. O'Rourke is like as a person, but as a narrator, at least in this title, I found her unreliable, bourgeois, and-- though I hate to say it-- whiny. Some sections, like those that follow in Sontag's tradition (autoimmunity as metaphor) are smart, well-researched, trenchant analyses of the discourse surrounding autoimmune disorders.
But when scientific research is involved, O'Rourke has a taste for dubious sources and unconventional experts. We get multiple scenes of her trawling online message boards, which, frankly, constitute the bottom of the barrel in information quality. I understand that part of the motive in writing this memoir is to seek understanding outside the confines of Western medicine; to diagnose, as it were, the problems that exist in the dominant system. Sometimes it takes unconventional sources to critique conventional systems. I started this title with a desire to be convinced of the reality of such conditions as chronic Lyme, but somewhere between O'Rourke's ozone therapy and the fecal transplant, I ended up leaving more skeptical than I entered.
O'Rourke's character is often at pains to mention her relative privilege when talking about the healthcare system that she navigates, but as she runs the gamut of New England/ New Age health trends (in one scene, she mentions that a friend is afraid to invite her to dinner because of all the self-imposed dietary restrictions that O'Rourke subscribes to), I left feeling deeply annoyed with this character who chases after every upper-middle class myth of healthy living. The narrator is adamant that her symptoms are not psychosomatic in origin, but at the same time acknowledges that she is experiencing a "grief too large" and symptoms of a depression. I have been treated for bouts of severe depression-- it leads to physiological symptoms similar to the ones that O'Rourke describes, and it almost feels as if, in the quest for an autoimmune diagnosis, O'Rourke is dismissive of psychiatry.
Add to this occasionally less-than-stellar metaphors ("Depleted like a phone running too many apps"), and I can't quite see what people love about this book. That said, I finished it. And some metaphors ("a topiary of nerves") are sticking with me, even if I haven't yet decided whether they're good or bad.