The Welsh Fasting Girl

By: Varley O’Connor

Narrated by: Shiromi Arserio, Marisa Calin

Twelve-year-old Sarah Jacob was the most famous of the Victorian fasting girls, who claimed to miraculously survive without food, serving as flash points between struggling religious, scientific, and political factions. In this novel based on Sarah’s life and premature death from what may be the first documented case of anorexia, an American journalist, recovering from her husband’s death in the Civil War, leaves her home and children behind to travel to Wales, where she investigates Sarah’s bizarre case by becoming the young girl’s friend and confidante. Unable to prevent the girl’s tragic decline while doctors, nurses, and a local priest keep watch, she documents the curious family dynamic, the trial that convicted Sarah’s parents, and an era’s hysterical need to both believe and destroy Sarah’s seemingly miraculous power.

Intense, dark, and utterly compelling, The Welsh Fasting Girl delves into the complexities of a true story to understand how a culture’s anxieties led to the murder of a child.

©2019 Varley O'Connor. First published in the United States in 2019 by Bellevue Literary Press, New York (P)2019 Blackstone Publishing

slow and uninteresting

I began struggling immediately in the first chapter, and had hoped it would get better but really couldn't get through more than a couple of chapters. I couldn't relate to the main character and nothing seemed to be happening. The reader had a very flat tone which didn't help either.