Though distraught, she seems to grasp the fact that the psychiatrist's death is principally a tragedy for him, his wife and two young children. Unsurprisingly, this death – the shock of it, and the inevitable sense of having been abandoned – looms large for Forrest. But that's not until she's made a serious suicide attempt, come home and done a spell in the Priory, and spent several more years in damaging relationships, all of it made more disorientating by the fact that Dr R dies suddenly of lung cancer without any of his patients knowing he was ill. Ultimately, with his help, she turns herself around. Lonely, bulimic and increasingly self-destructive, she binges, purges and cuts herself with razors, while embarking on a series of casual and abusive sexual relationships.įinally, having reached the point where "sex didn't register unless it hurt", she finds herself in a hospital emergency ward and from there manages to get herself to Dr R, a likeably down-to-earth psychiatrist. Many would envy her, so it's perhaps not surprising that for some time she keeps her real life (and self) secret. Indeed, there's a fairytale element to this tale of a bright and attractive 22-year-old from a loving, if eccentric, family who, on contract to the Guardian and with a first novel about to come out, moves to Manhattan to write.
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