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A review by busybusyreading_asako
My Body Keeps Your Secrets by Lucia Osborne-Crowley
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
“Shame is the glue that holds the false world together.”
This book is a tapestry of Osbourne-Crowley’s own experience with abuse, chronic illness, and disordered eating - as well as those of more than 100 women and non-binary people that she interviewed for this project. She treads with extreme respect and care to the stories she tells, and the result is a book that is eye-opening, highly emotional, and somehow also compulsively readable.
This was such an ambitious concept and it was so well executed. The breadth, depth, and variety of research undertaken was incredible - a combination of classic and contemporary fiction and non fiction, as well as scientific texts were referenced to create a rich and diverse backdrop for stories of the female and nonbinary experience with trauma, abuse, and the body’s reckoning.
By the way, I don’t think I’ve ever read a Non Fiction book that referenced Fiction books… Have you?? I really enjoyed little ‘aha’ moments when a book I’d read was mentioned, which usually doesn’t happen in Non Fic! Some examples are Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Dept of Speculation, Conversations with Friends, and The Crane Wife. I found these references quite refreshing and made some aspects of this text particularly accessible and relatable.
I honestly can’t recommend this highly enough. It’s heavy but readable, and so necessary.
This book is a tapestry of Osbourne-Crowley’s own experience with abuse, chronic illness, and disordered eating - as well as those of more than 100 women and non-binary people that she interviewed for this project. She treads with extreme respect and care to the stories she tells, and the result is a book that is eye-opening, highly emotional, and somehow also compulsively readable.
This was such an ambitious concept and it was so well executed. The breadth, depth, and variety of research undertaken was incredible - a combination of classic and contemporary fiction and non fiction, as well as scientific texts were referenced to create a rich and diverse backdrop for stories of the female and nonbinary experience with trauma, abuse, and the body’s reckoning.
By the way, I don’t think I’ve ever read a Non Fiction book that referenced Fiction books… Have you?? I really enjoyed little ‘aha’ moments when a book I’d read was mentioned, which usually doesn’t happen in Non Fic! Some examples are Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Dept of Speculation, Conversations with Friends, and The Crane Wife. I found these references quite refreshing and made some aspects of this text particularly accessible and relatable.
I honestly can’t recommend this highly enough. It’s heavy but readable, and so necessary.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Eating disorder