Book review: ‘Illness as many Narratives: Arts, Medicine and Culture'

Abstract

Following our initial call for clinical and academic reviews of ‘Illness as many Narratives,’ Drs Claire Hooker and Scott Fitzpatrick offer their perspectives as researchers in the broader field of the medical humanities. Y There could be no stronger sign of the coming of age of the critical medical humanities than Stella Bolaki’s Illness As Many Narratives. A piece of artistry as deft, intricate, and steadfastly complex as the astonishingly diverse range of artworks presented within it, Illness As Many Narratives at last moves us well beyond the canonical confines of what we might now start calling ‘first-wave medical humanities’. This book troubles the assumptions, privileges and discursive structures of the first wave, yet all the while preserves complete fidelity to its core project of ‘writing back’ to medicine-as-dominant-paradigm.