Critical Narratives of Recovery : Rejecting Repair, Restoration and Resolution

Studies how narrative illustrates the complexity, ambivalence and irresolution of recovery.

Recovery narratives may appear to be uniform, charting an inspirational arc from tragedy to triumph. Critical Narratives of Recovery, however, explores narratives of recovery that challenge and critique the conventions of closure and catharsis. Distinguishing narratives of illness from narratives of recovery, the latter detailing a protracted period of time after illness, this book contests the telos of the hegemonic recovery narrative. Drawing on both memoirs and scholarship that acknowledge the ambiguous and incomplete nature of recovery, the analysis counterbalances influential approaches towards narrative as reparative and even curative. Recovery, it is argued, does not mark the conclusion of a well-told tale but invites the question, ‘what now?’ The first book-length critique of narratives of recovery, this study analyses a range of twenty-first-century anglophone memoirs in print and other media, including film and graphic narratives, to argue that, while recovery may well be possible, it is not necessarily complete, nor restorative, nor even good.