The Welsh Fasting Girl by Varley O'Connor

While reading the first section of The Welsh Fasting Girl I thought it was all too familiar, too similar to another book I had read about a historical fasting girl. A young girl reportedly has stopped eating but is alive and well, her community hoping it is a miracle for in the mid-1800s faith is being challenged by science. The parents agree to a watch to ascertain the girl is not obtaining nourishment. A woman from outside of the community, an American journalist, comes to Wales to cover the story but becomes emotionally involved.

But halfway through the book, Varley O'Connor went in a completely different direction from the book I had previously read. Whereas the other book offered a wish-fulfillment ending, O'Connor's fasting girl does not survive. And this allows the novel to go into deeper territory, probing culpability and guilt in the family, community, culture, and laws of the time.

How could people not save the life of a starving girl? The doctors and nurses, the vicar, the parents, the sibling, all stood by, trapped by their own dark dreams and secrets as Sarah wasted away over fourteen days.

And what would drive a beautiful girl to embrace death?

Hysterical anorexia was identified as a specific disease in 1873, a few years after the death of the Welsh fasting girl. O'Connor notes that although records do not show that Sarah was sexually abused, a high incident of girls who fasted were in fact victims of sexual abuse.

The fictional American reporter, Christine, is a central character. As she writes letters to her reporter husband who never returned from covering the Civil War, we understand her perception of the people and events playing out. Her children grown, her beloved husband gone, she struggles with questions of identity and role in the world. She is young enough to miss love and old enough to have a life separate from her children.

After the trial to determine culpability in Sarah's death, Christine pursues further knowledge, several clues indicating that there was more to the story. And as she digs deeper, a complicated family web is unraveled.

O'Connor's tragic novel is beautifully written, her deep research contributing to a vivid sense of place and time. And although a work of historical fiction addressing the conflicts of the 1860s, the issues are relevant today.

I received an ARC from the publisher through LibraryThing. My review is fair and unbiased.

Hear an interview with Varley O'Connor on Biblio Radio here.

Read about the case at the Welsh Historical Society here.

The Welsh Fasting Girl
Varley O'Connor
Bellevue Literary Press
Publication May 7, 2019
$16.99 paperback
ISBN: 978-1-942658-62-7
ebook ISBN: 978-1-942658-63-4