Fourteen year-old Sophie Gordon’s life changes forever when her mentally frail mother loses her fight with depression and takes her own life. Her father seeks solace in alcohol, and Sophie finds comfort in food which transitions into compulsive dieting.
The Diet rapidly takes over her mind and body until it becomes life-threatening. Will Sophie break free from her obsession with losing, or will it overcome her?
A novel of secrets and loss, of obsessions and reality, of coping and going under…and of survival.
Rebecca Warren was born in Derby in 1978. After spending most of her life in the West Midlands area, she now lives in East Devon.
She had her first poem accepted for publication on her 18th birthday and has had many more poems published over the years, along with some short stories and now her first novel.
Her hobbies include reading literary fiction and poetry, and studying modern languages and philosophy. She also enjoys spending inordinate amounts of time in coffee shops.
“I have always had a strong interest in why things happen, the motivation behind why people do what they do. My novels explore this, being very psychologically-based and contemplative.
“As well as other topics, I write about the experience of mental-illness in general, as I have gone through this myself in the form of clinical depression and chronic anxiety, and this has made me want to explore it in my writing.
“I wrote a novel specifically about a teenage girl’s experience of an eating-disorder as a way to try to understand for myself something that seems so counter-intuitive – Why would someone feel that they needed to be thin almost to the point of starvation in order to be happy?
“I first pondered this question at the age of 14 when I read a copy of Maureen Dunbar’s book, ‘Catherine’, a biography of the daughter that she lost to anorexia. This sparked off my interest in the topic and lead me to do research into it. The end result of this is ‘The Art Of Loss’. I hope you find it rewarding.”
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