A silent epidemic of chronic illnesses afflicts tens of millions of Americans: these are diseases that are poorly understood, frequently marginalized, and can go undiagnosed and unrecognized altogether. Renowned writer Meghan O’Rourke delivers a revelatory investigation into this elusive category of “invisible” illness that encompasses autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVID, synthesizing the personal and the universal to help all of us through this new frontier.
Drawing on her own medical experiences as well as a decade of interviews with doctors, patients, researchers, and public health experts, O’Rourke traces the history of Western definitions of illness, and reveals how inherited ideas of cause, diagnosis, and treatment have led us to ignore a host of hard-to-understand medical conditions, ones that resist easy description or simple cures. And as America faces this health crisis of extraordinary proportions, the populations most likely to be neglected by our institutions include women, the working class, and people of color.
Blending lyricism and erudition, candor and empathy, O’Rourke brings together her deep and disparate talents and roles as critic, journalist, poet, teacher, and patient, synthesizing the personal and universal into one monumental project arguing for a seismic shift in our approach to disease. The Invisible Kingdom offers hope for the sick, solace and insight for their loved ones, and a radical new understanding of our bodies and our health.
A silent epidemic of chronic illnesses afflicts tens of millions of Americans: these are diseases that are poorly understood, frequently marginalized, and can go undiagnosed and unrecognized altogether. Renowned writer Meghan O’Rourke delivers a revelatory investigation into this elusive category of “invisible” illness that encompasses autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVID, synthesizing the personal and the universal to help all of us through this new frontier.
Drawing on her own medical experiences as well as a decade of interviews with doctors, patients, researchers, and public health experts, O’Rourke traces the history of Western definitions of illness, and reveals how inherited ideas of cause, diagnosis, and treatment have led us to ignore a host of hard-to-understand medical conditions, ones that resist easy description or simple cures. And as America faces this health crisis of extraordinary proportions, the populations most likely to be neglected by our institutions include women, the working class, and people of color.
Blending lyricism and erudition, candor and empathy, O’Rourke brings together her deep and disparate talents and roles as critic, journalist, poet, teacher, and patient, synthesizing the personal and universal into one monumental project arguing for a seismic shift in our approach to disease. The Invisible Kingdom offers hope for the sick, solace and insight for their loved ones, and a radical new understanding of our bodies and our health.
Critiques-
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Meghan O'Rourke narrates her harrowing account of spending years trying to find a diagnosis for her chronic illness. She takes listeners through a multitude of medical appointments, experimental procedures, and tests. The decades-long process sounds exhausting, and O'Rourke makes it clear to listeners that it was. By delivering her own memoir, she captures the emotional pain, the uncertainty of the seeming void of her future, and the joy of finally becoming healthy enough to have children. Reliving all of those moments must have been painful, but hearing those emotions make this experience much more real and effective than it would have been even in the hands of a gifted professional narrator. A.R.F. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine
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Starred review from December 13, 2021
With a poet’s sensibility, journalist’s rigor, and patient’s personal investment, O’Rourke (The Long Goodbye) sheds light on the physical and mental toll of having a mysterious chronic illness. “I got sick the way Hemingway says you go broke: ‘gradually and then suddenly,’ ” she writes before delving into the decades-long game of cat and mouse she played with symptoms ranging from rashes to exhaustion starting in the late 1990s. As she reflects on the labyrinthine system she had to navigate before eventually being diagnosed with late-stage Lyme disease, O’Rourke traces the history of Western medicine—from the “dramatic clarity” of germ theory to its murky treatment and dismissal of patients it can’t diagnose. As she writes, “It is a truth universally acknowledged among the chronically ill that a young woman in possession of vague symptoms... will be in search of a doctor who believes she is actually sick.” Wary of “late-capitalist” illness narratives that demand either wellness or wisdom from sick people, O’Rourke shirks a tidy recovery story and instead mines her abjection, astonishment, and vulnerability—and the radical illness writings of Alphonse Daudet, Alice James, and Audre Lorde—to offer a stunningly raw account of living with the existential complexities of a sickness that “never fully resolves.” Readers will be left in awe.
