The Diary of the Other Health Freak

The first thing I look at when I pick up a new book is the cover. This book’s cover reflects a teenage girl’s moods and, being a teenage girl myself, it appealed to me. The title appealed as well, as I also happen to be something of a hypochondriac.

When I started reading the first chapter (all about me), I was surprised to find that it was written in a mixture of broken French and English. To someone, like me, who speaks even less French than Suzie (the main character) does, it was fairly incomprehensible. However, I forgot this when I started to read “Organising boys, sex and work”. I found the list of things you’re legally allowed to do when you’re 16 and 18 interesting, as previously I got things on these lists mixed up. The actual “diary entries” were very close to my own diary entries, particularly concerning examinations, revision and “Suzie’s birthday list”.

In “My rights and animal rights” I laughed out loud when nobody noticed Suzie’s new hair cut because a week before nobody had noticed mine.

When Suzie and her cousin Daisy wrote to a problem page because Daisy’s parents were splitting up, I though it was great to have an answer from the page editor (pp. 39‐42), including paragraphs by children in the same situation as Daisy and some of my friends.

In chapter 7, I could sympathise with Suzie in bed with glandular fever. When I had it, it was the worst I had ever felt in my life. I felt I really understood it when I read the glandular fever leaflet on pp. 59‐61.

In year eight we had classes about contraception but it was good to refresh my memory and I found I could answer most of the questions in the leaflet on “You, sex and contraception” in the same chapter.

The anorexia stories in chapter nine quite frightened me as I didn’t realise it was a killing disease.

The facts about suicide were very helpful, as someone I know has had suicidal thoughts and the information helped me to help them.

The things that I found most interesting were the leaflets about drugs and AIDS, as I knew practically nothing about the latter and it was good to refresh my memory about the dangers of drug taking.

All these leaflets and lists of facts were linked with funny, touching and true‐to‐life “diary entries”, extremely funny jokes (e.g. Why does my brother Pete wear underpants in the shower? Because he doesn’t like looking at the unemployed), and some very good illustrations by John Astrop.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading the book and I would definitely recommend it to any “Health Freak”

Alison’s mother, Jenny McWhirter, adds: my view of the book is that it is great for able, imaginative readers, like Alison. Being an able reader in a house where there is a lot of health literature, and having a vivid imagination, have probably contributed to her mild hypochondria, so the fact that she found most of the information reassuring is a good recommendation for the book.

As a health educator, I have some reservations about the value of this book for less able readers, who share the same teenage health concerns as Alison but who are not able to access the information so easily, especially in mock French (Alison studies German). Teenage magazines go some way to covering this need, but in fragments.

The model of health promotion adopted by the book appears to be rather medical, but the outlook is positive and it can be read as a novel and as an information book, so it has the potential to be used again and again as new problems and questions arise. The Diary of the Other Health Freak seems to have started where Alison is, so let’s have something for the other, harder‐to‐reach audience, with the same refreshing appeal.