Description

‘A courageous and beautifully written exploration of a vitally important subject’ The Herald

‘Fascinating’ Katherine May

‘These books … deepen our understanding of how our bodies are ourselves, and how we may live…’ New Statesman

‘Beautifully written, lyrical and unflinching’ Charlotte Fox Weber

‘Her passion for her topic spills into her writing; the conclusions she draws are troubling and thought-provoking’ The Telegraph

The day Jessica Hamel-Akre discovered the ideas of George Cheyne – an eighteenth-century polymath and London society figure known as ‘Dr Diet’ – it sparked an intellectual obsession, a ten-year study of women’s appetite and a personal unravelling.

In this bold and radical book, Hamel-Akre follows Cheyne through the pages of medical studies, novels and historical scandals, meeting ash-eating mystics, wasting society girls, impoverished female fasters and early feminist philosophers, all of whom were once grappling with nascent ideas around food, longing and the body. In doing so, she uncovers the eighteenth-century origins of both today’s diet culture and her own troubled relationship with wanting.

Blending history and memoir, The Art of Not Eating will change the way we look at appetite, desire, rationality and oppression, and show how it all got tangled up with what we eat.

Publisher Review

A fascinating exploration of the deep roots of our diet culture, and a very personal account of its current repercussions * Katherine May, author of Wintering * A beautifully written, lyrical and unflinching exploration of our relationships with eating and food. Hamel-Akre takes us into the heart of human experiences. This book is psychologically illuminating and, most importantly, deeply fascinating * Charlotte Fox Weber, author of What We Want * This is perhaps because I’m dismayed that these stories of danger and shame need to be told and retold, but they do, and these books by Sarah Moss and Jessica Hamel-Akre deepen our understanding of how our bodies are ourselves, and how we may live – allow ourselves to live – in this hard world in our soft and beautiful flesh. — Erica Wagner * New Statesman * Jessica Hamel-Akre delves into complex emotional and philosophical territory. Deeply personal as well as highly political, her book dices with the thorny old conundrum about the relationship between mind and body, before reaching an unexpected conclusion about the human soul that, I confess, I didn’t quite grasp. I did, however, thoroughly enjoy The Art of Not Eating: a courageous and beautifully written exploration of a vitally important subject. — Susan Flockhart * The Herald * Her passion for her topic spills into her writing; the conclusions she draws are troubling and thought-provoking. * The Telegraph * The book convincingly shows that the scrutiny of the female body, which can feel so unrelenting in the Instagram era, is far from new. Cheyne’s milk and seed diet may seem eccentric but is it so different from the diets that have their moment in the sun today? — Leaf Arbuthnot * Daily Mail *