Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives - Hardcover

Dillon, Brian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1844881342 ISBN 13: 9781844881345

Publisher: Penguin Ireland, 2009

Synopsis

Tormented Hope is a book about mind and body, fear and hope, illness and imagination. It explores, in the stories of nine individuals, the relationship between mind and body as it is mediated by the experience, or simply the terror, of being ill. And in an intimate investigation of those nine lives, it shows how the mind can make a prison of the body, by distorting our sense of ourselves as physical beings. Brian Dillon, whose brilliant debut In the Dark Room established him as an uncommonly intelligent and fluent explorer of the realm where ideas and emotions overlap, looks at nine prominent hypochondriacs - James Boswell, Charlotte Brontė, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Daniel Paul Schreber, Alice James, Marcel Proust, Glenn Gould and Andy Warhol - and what their lives tell us about the way the mind works with, and against, the body. His findings are stimulating and surprising, and the stories he tells are often moving, sometimes hilarious, and always gripping.

About this title

Review:

`Illuminating' --Philip Hoare, Sunday Telegraph

`Brian Dillon is a superbly careful writer. ... [This book] will delight, move and horrify any of the millions of us who, like the late Spike Milligan, have at one time or another contemplated having "I told you I was ill" inscribed on our gravestones.' -- Sam Leith, Daily Mail

`The language is fluent and cogent, the story telling economical and deft. And the whole is a feat of compression ... This is a superb book about a fascinating subject and one I'd recommend to anyone' --Carlo Gebler, Irish Times

'You don't need to be a hypochondriac to enjoy this series of discursive, insightful essays that are full of quirky details and fascinating anecdotes'. --James Dellingpole, Mail on Sunday

`Strangely delightful ... Dillon's book is constantly intelligent'
--Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday

`Excellent'
--Kevin Jackson, Sunday Times

From the Back Cover:

Praise for In the Dark Room
'An amazing achievement in terms of prose style alone' Daily Telegraph
'Moving and beautifully observed' Scotland on Sunday
'Remarkable' Time Out
'Arrestingly intelligent and freshly coloured ... [Dillon] is a born writer' Irish Independent

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Ireland
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1844881342
• ISBN 13: 9781844881345
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288