Karen Havelin's Please Read This Leaflet Carefully is a life told in reverse and a subversion of what we expect from stories of illness. Having been diagnosed with endometriosis in her twenties, we follow Laura Fjellstad in her struggle to live a normal life across New York, Paris and Oslo, fuelled by her belief that to survive her chronic illness she must be completely self-reliant. Flowing backwards from 2016 to 1995, we meet Laura's younger selves: her healthier selves. Laura as a daughter, a figure skater, a lover, and a mother-finally leading a life her own teenage self would be in awe of. To be devoured intensely in one sitting, Please Read This Leaflet Carefully is a remarkable debut novel with bracing emotional insights and piercing descriptions of pain that linger in one's mind long after the last page. It is also a beguiling meditation on relationships, motherhood, sexuality, pain and the limitations of our own bodies.
