My Oxford - A Memoir — A Memoir

Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description

Wedi'i ysgrifennu ar gyfer chwaer gŵr a fu farw o anorecsia, dyma gofnod o brofiadau gwraig ifanc o'r cyflwr hwn tra yr oedd yn astudio ym Mhrifysgol Rhydychen.

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

Written for the sister of a man who died from anorexia, this is a young woman's experience of the disorder while studying at the University of Oxford.

Dosbarthu

Byddwn yn dosbarthu eitemau sydd mewn stoc o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith, fel arfer drwy Royal Mail Tracked 48. Ar gyfer archebion o flaen llaw, byddwn yn dosbarthu’r eitem o fewn 3 diwrnod gwaith ar ôl ei derbyn gan ein cyflenwr.

Dispatch

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Bywgraffiad yr Awdur / Author Biography

Catherine Wesselinoff (nee Haines) is a teaching and research scholar in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, Australia. She completed a Combined Honours Degree in English Literature and Philosophy at the Australian National University in 2009, a master's degree in English literature at the University of Oxford in 2012, and a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Sydney in 2022. She lives in Sydney with her husband and son.

Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

'Superbly written; and as an author myself, I love the sparseness of the text - as if the words were doing to the page what the writer was dong to the flesh. It is a perfect example of the connection between style and content.' - Stephen Stoneham 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.