Patient 1: Forgetting and Finding Myself

Description

An extraordinary memoir of illness, survival, defiance, and Huntington's Disease. * Shortlisted for the RSL Christopher Bland Prize * Honest, intelligent and unsentimental, Patient 1 is a startling self-portrait written with wit and vulnerability, and a unique testament to the power of hope in the face of illness. Charlotte Raven had never heard of Huntington's Disease when, in her mid-thirties, she discovered that her father was suffering from the illness. Life for her and her young family would never be the same again. Patient 1 is her brutally candid account of coming to terms with this inherited neurodegenerative disease, which can manifest at any time in life for people who carry the faulty gene. As the illness began to take hold of Raven's body, mind and memory, she began to write. She wrote like her life depended on it - and in many ways she believed it did. Frank and fearless, Patient 1 is an act of self-preservation and a kind of reckoning- with the illness, with the person she once was, with the person she is now. In an afterword, Raven's doctor Ed Wild - one of the country's leading experts in Huntington's - explains how doctors and patients like Charlotte are working together in the hope of one day eliminating this disease altogether.

Charlotte Raven (Author) Charlotte Raven was a journalist in the 1990s and her columns and articles have appeared frequently in the Guardian and New Statesman. She was a contributor to the Modern Review, and editor of the relaunched version in 1997. She lives in London. Edward Wild (Author) Professor Edward Wild is Professor of Neurology at University College London, a Consultant Neurologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London's Queen Square, and Associate Director of UCL Huntington's Disease Centre.

Insightful, frank and often moving... Though there is an underlying note of deep sadness, more often she writes with humour, a dose of self mockery and no small amount of courage. -- Stephanie Merritt * Observer * [An] unsparing memoir... but Raven does much more than write an illness memoir... Raven explains in her introduction that Huntington's is not a linear disease but is experienced rather as a series of traumatic random-seeming assaults... it is that formless inevitability...that Raven enacts so powerfully here. -- Kathryn Hughes * Guardian * A phenomenal achievement... [it] chronicles her journey into her illness in a way that is truthful, traumatic and brave. * The Times * Brutally candid... [a] devastating but remarkable testament of self-preservation. -- Caroline Sanderson * The Bookseller, Editor's Choice * Charlotte Raven's Patient 1 is brilliant, terrifying, heart-breaking and laceratingly honest. She has the unflinching, unsentimental clarity of Rachel Cusk and the tender humour of John Bayley - but her style is utterly unique. -- Peter Bradshaw A searingly honest and important read. With neither pity nor sentimentality, Charlotte Raven captures the experience of living while losing one's mind. I cannot forget her words. -- Dr Rachel Clarke This is a deeply moving and profound memoir about facing the worst in life - and continuing. Everyone should read it. -- Johann Hari Patient 1 charts Charlotte Raven's bittersweet journey from her charmed, hedonist youth to an embattled future. Her charismatic character and scandalous humour is there on the page despite the creeping privations of Huntington's. With the kind of self-knowledge only accessible through suffering, she still manages to write powerfully and with beauty. -- Cornelia Parker A powerful account of living with Huntington's disease. -- Katy Guest * Guardian * [A] chatty, irreverent memoir... a surprisingly pithy and entertaining read. The author's candour and self-depreciation make her all the more likeable. * UK Press Syndication * Considering this is essentially a book about a terminal illness, it's surprisingly entertaining. -- Katie Wright * i * Raven is unsparing about her life now... she hasn't lost...her biting wit and mordant sense of humour. * Tablet *