My Oxford: A Memoir

Catherine Haines’ lively account of student life is enriched with literary, philosophical and existential questions. As the Cambridge Weight Plan spins out of control, a post-graduate’s academic subject, ’ the mind-body problem’, goes through an existential phase to become ’ extraordinary morality’ rather than a mental health problem. The iron will with which Catherine imposes on herself ever more onerous conditions is awe-inspiring. The author is clearly fiercely intelligent, as we can see from the way she exposes the ugly truth behind historical depictions of women with eating disorders and indeed the way society frames abstinence from food as an ally of virtue. However, starving her body means that Catherine also begins to starve her brain. Incisive literary criticism of Hamlet descends into feverish noodlings about Einstein’s theory of relativity. Her descriptions enfold the reader in the hideous illogic of the anorexic. This is a rigorous, philosophical case for regarding an eating disorder as pilgrimage, a personal exorcism, the kind which writers perform on paper while fighting with demons, fears, fate and death, an exorcism which, while painful, is also saving.

Catherine Haines, is an educational advisor at Oxford University, a visiting lecturer at King’s College, London, the educationalist for EULAR, the scientific and educational society for postgraduate rheumatology in Europe, and a medical educational consultant for Health Education England.