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Wendy's Comments: Peeling the Onion
 Wendy's Comments:
The inspiration for the book came mostly from my own accident, and a feeling that I wanted to tell the truth about what it was like to go through a trauma like that. I'm not Anna - I was 20 years older, for one thing, so my needs, problems and solutions were quite different, even though the injuries and some of the medical treatments were the same. However, emotions are often quite similar, no matter what age we are and no matter what the actual trauma or grief is, and it was these emotions that I felt most books about trauma failed to tell the truth about. I felt quite angry about books that gave people unlikely miracles, or suggested that will power will conquer anything (you need willpower, but it has limits).
It was something I'd thought about previously, as an occupational therapist, but naturally the feeling intensified when I became a patient. Although it's written entirely from Anna's viewpoint, I've tried to write it so that the reader may sometimes glimpse that there might be other points of view: for example that Hairy Legs is actually doing her best to offer help, even though Anna hates needing that help - and therefore hates Hairy Legs.
Similarly, although one reviewer has criticised Luke as being too good to be true, I think it's important to remember that we are seeing him only from the point of view of the girl who's fallen in love with him.
Some readers have asked about the specific problems that Anna had. I did not want to explain more than Anna was likely to understand as she went along, partly because a lot of these problems - balance, ringing in the ears, planning motor actions, are difficult for the medical profession to understand too, partly because that confusion and lack of simple explanation would have been another upsetting thing for Anna - and partly because this book was meant to explore the effect on the whole person of the total of these injuries. So my advice to the general reader is: don't worry about exactly what a traumatic spondylolisthesis is. Just consider how you'd feel if it was present in a long list of things wrong with you. (If you really want to know, it's one vertebra having been knocked forward in relation to the one below, instead of sitting neatly on top. As I understand it.)
People also ask about the italicised sections. They are meant to represent the undercurrent of Anna's thoughts, and are to some extent the more honest representation of her life as she feels it. We all sometimes have things running through our minds, whether they are emotions or conscious thoughts that are quite separate from what we are saying or doing at the time. However, grief and pain often intensify this experience, as we struggle to hide our real feelings so that we may be seen as polite and "normal".
Similarly, the onion theme refers to not only stripping back the superficial layers of self to reach a better knowledge of who Anna is, but also the loss of the different roles in her life. Each of us plays many roles: Anna is a daughter, granddaughter, niece, sister, friend, acquaintance, student, karate champion, etc. She will behave slightly differently in each of these roles (you probably talk differently to your best friend than to your grandmother, and yet you may be being yourself in both situations.) Her disabilities have either prevented her from carrying out these roles, or have made her feel unable to do so - for instance she is naturally still Matt and Bronwyn's sister, but her position as the older caring sister has been altered. In addition to the roles that we act out at present, we each also carry the dream roles that we hope to achieve (or remember in the past). The loss of these future roles is extremely significant, especially during the period in which Anna is unable to see that any useful or adult role will ever be part of her future.
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