Alice in the Looking Glass: A Mother and Daughter’s Experience of

ALICE IN THE LOOKING GLASS is a moving memoir written by a mother and her anorexic daughter, Alice. In the first part of the book Jo Kingsley writes with raw intensity about Alice’s illness and what she hopes is her recovery. At ten, Alice was an easy-going, free-spirited child with a tremendous sense of humour and adored by everyone who knew her. At eleven, she started to develop her ‘rigmaroles’ – little rituals which grew into severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder – and then, at fourteen, turned into anorexia. Jo describes her journey through what she calls Planet Anorexia, recognising the amazing support she received both professionally and personally and telling of the long periods of despair, guilt, anger and, as the mother of a much-loved child, sheer terror. By opening her heart and writing this book her wish is to pass on her experiences as the mother of an anorexic child, to share all her doubts, failures, anxieties and eventually some successes in the hope of supporting other families going through the same trauma. In the second part of the book Alice, now eighteen and on the road to recovery, also looks back over the past eight years.