The Reading Cure

'Freeman's pleasure in the food of literature ... is infectious. THE READING CURE will speak to anyone who has ever felt pain and found solace in a book' Bee Wilson

At the age of fourteen, Laura Freeman was diagnosed with anorexia. But even when recovery seemed impossible, the one appetite she never lost was her love of reading. Slowly, book by book, Laura re-discovered how to enjoy food - and life - through literature.

Short-listed for The Sunday Times/Peters Fraser & Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award 2018 (UK)

“Enchanting and original... an illuminating and highly engaging way to think about all kinds of literature.”

[A] beautifully written hybrid of memoir and literary criticism... This book is about the anguish of anorexia, written by a bookworm unfurling her wings as a writer of considerable power. - TIMES

A miraculous memoir ... Anyone who has encountered anorexia, either first hand or in someone they love, will recognise this harrowing yet heartening portrait. The Reading Cure is a book for the bookish, for those hungry for self-knowledge, or for those who are just hungry. - STANDPOINT

Enchanting and original... an illuminating and highly engaging way to think about all kinds of literature. - Amanda Craig

This book seems to have had the most unanimously glowing reviews of 2018 so far. Quite rightly: Freeman's wonderfully uplifting book is all about how she rediscovered the joy of food, and overcame her anorexia, by escaping into the fictional worlds of Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf. - SUNDAY TIMES STYLE

Laura Freeman writes for the Spectator, The Times, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, TLS, Evening Standard and Apollo. She was shortlisted for Features Writer of the Year at the 2014 British Press Awards. She read history of art at Cambridge, graduating with a double first in 2010. The Reading Cure is her first book.

@LauraSFreeman

'Freeman's pleasure in the food of literature ... is infectious. THE READING CURE will speak to anyone who has ever felt pain and found solace in a book' Bee WilsonAt the age of fourteen, Laura Freeman was diagnosed with anorexia. But even when recovery seemed impossible, the one appetite she never lost was her love of reading. Slowly, book by book, Laura re-discovered how to enjoy food - and life - through literature.

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