Please Read This Leaflet Carefully
Keep This Leaflet. You May Need to Read It Again.
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Please Read This Leaflet Carefully, the debut novel from Norwegian writer and translator Karen Havelin, is the story of a woman whose body has become her enemy.
We meet Laura Fjellstad first as she works and cares for her young daughter, while struggling with debilitating pain and endometriosis, an invisible chronic illness. As the novel tracks backward, the reader meets Laura's younger and somewhat healthier selves (a hopeful bride in New York, a baby queer in Paris, a figure skater in Norway), and uncovers her tireless work to gain control of her identity, her illness and the conflicting demands made by doctors, friends, lovers and family. Havelin's debut novel etches details of daily life into a gripping and darkly humorous bildungsroman about the intricacies of love and life in a fragile body.
Man Booker Prize-winning author Paul Beatty says,
Jarringly funny and perceptive; an intimate reckoning with the inner demons and precarity of everyday life, unpacked through the very specific lens of a woman with chronic pain.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her forceful debut, Havelin follows a Norwegian woman in her 30s diagnosed with severe endometriosis and who has suffered a slew of physical ailments her entire life. Laura Fjellstad, newly divorced at 35, is the single mom of a two-year-old, and the daily navigation of pain, allergies, and fatigue plagues her life. Moving backwards from 2016 to 1995, readers trace the arc of her experience in reverse, discovering the promising figure skater she was at 14, who unknowingly will be sabotaged by her body in the future. The excruciating history of misery that began when Laura was an infant is nearly unfathomable, yet the author parses numerous health difficulties with veracity, detailing as well heartless reactions of some professionals, as well as the dubious attitudes of friends and family to her condition. While Laura has a lot to carp about, she gripes ad infinitum, even in the face of positive experiences, which will certainly put off some readers. But others will find this screed on the fight for normalcy against a backdrop of persistent agony to be a powerful narrative.
