How invisible can one get? (The Invisible Girl - Peter Barham)

Name: Secre

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Product:	The Invisible Girl - Peter Barham
Date:	09.07.08 (134 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Well written, educational, inspiring, funny

Disadvantages: Can be rather depressing

Another one of my problems with books is that the ones I tend to pick up are the stupidly depressing ones, 'A Boy Named It', 'Sickened', 'Don't Tell Mummy', the list is endless...and one of the more recent ones is this one - 'The Invisible Girl'. To give credit it is written in such a way that it doesn't seem depressing a lot of the time, but you cannot say that the basic story is in any way, shape or form a happy one. It is not however the same as the books mentioned above, because it is not written by the main person who the book is about, it cannot be said to be a quick buck for someone jumping on the gravy train and writing about their traumatic past. The book is written by Debbie Barham's father, and the reason for this alone is simple, the book starts with Debbie's death from anorexia on Easter Monday 2003.

===Boring Details===

Title: The Invisible Girl
Sub-title: A father's moving story of the daughter he lost
Author: Peter Barham
Co-author: Alan Hurndall
Publisher: Harper Element
First Published: 2005
ISBN: Hardback - 978-0-00-730542-4
Price: RRP - £12.99 (hardback)

===Debbie Barham===

My guess would be that very few people have heard of this young lady who died at a tragically young age, unless of course you are or were in the comedy business before she died. The reason is that she wasn't someone like the comedians you see on TV, who just tell the audience the jokes which they have written out before them, she was one of those people behind the screen. The unsung heroes. The ones who actually write the jokes that we all laugh at when they are told by the people like Rory Bremner and Ned Shirrin. Their names don't tend to get mentioned except possibly in the credits at the end which no one actually bothers to read.
Right from the start Debbie was noted as a bright lass, being moved up a year in her high school - Sheffield Girls High, which she hated and noted as 'the unmitigated hell on earth'. But whilst most people at the school stayed on for sixth form, particularly those with the brains, she refused. Although she had won the scholarship for sixth form, the only one available as it happened, she refused it and more or less swanned off to London. To do what she was best at doing, writing jokes.

It turned out that she had been writing these jokes which were being aired on radio and TV since she was 15, submitting her work under the name D.A. Barham, because in a comedy world dominated by men from Oxford and Cambridge she felt, probably quite rightly, that a teenage girl would never be accepted. Once her name had been established however, she came out of the woodwork, and although originally got much of the same reception as she had originally anticipated, it wasn't long before she was truly respected by her colleagues for her mental quickness and how prolific her writing was whilst still being at top quality.
The crunch comes however in the fact that was stated earlier, Debbie had anorexia, and severe anorexia at that. She made jokes about this in her work; 'Psychologists argue that eating disorders are all down to your upbringing, specifically the upbringing of your lunch' (Clive Anderson). But although she was making these sorts of jokes and quick witted comments, she couldn't disguise the fact that she was truly struggling with this disorder and the pictures on the front of the hardback issue illustrate how she changed over the years. Eventually, as the disorder will do to anybody who suffers from it, she got to the point where the disorder took complete control, leading her manager to try to get her help, and her being fired from several of the jobs she was at to try to make her help herself. It says something that on the day of her death, one of her managers contacted her via email when she was 1 hour late for her deadline on a piece of work, saying that maybe he was being paranoid but something wasn't right and could she please contact him. Three hours later another message was sent, this time saying that he obviously had nothing better to do with his weekend but he was getting very close to contacting the police, by the time he did her body had been found. She'd died of heart failure due to her anorexia, and at the time she only weighted 4 and a half stone.


===The book===

The book itself is written by Debbie's father, Peter Barham, and he follows both her past from when she was a child as well as the times nearer to the present, and then his own feelings after her death. It is a very well written book and has the feeling almost of the way a man's mind would actually work when he is trying to relive the past to remember his daughter, as well as thinking in the present as well. Although the book was written well after Debbie's death, from the way it is structured you could be forgiven for believing that it was written just after her death. It starts with her death and her fathers instinctive reaction to that, then goes back in time as if to suggest that a fathers memory would instinctively go back to when his child was little and remember the good times first. From that point onwards the book skips between far past, 'recent' past and 'present', present in this case meaning the time of Debbie's death.

The book is formatted in a mixed style, as it involves both what he remembers from Debbie, what Debbie's colleagues remember of her and what she wrote herself both for radio shows and for different notes and websites. This makes the book seem far more valid than it would otherwise be, because it's not just a father waxing sentimental on the daughter that he lost, but her own work as well. And it is her work which actually makes the book, because without that it would just be yet another sob story, and really nothing special. Her wit alone would make the book worth reading, even if this isn't your usual style of book, an example of this would be her piece on computers:
'I like to consider myself an independent, intelligent, career woman. I am in favour of sexual equality in the workplace. I am as likely as the next woman to knee any male chauvinist pig in the pork balls. But I admit I still have to get a man to show me how to work my computer. 'You go to your Sys ops menu, right click option 3, yeah, then format your document and initialise the printer. Okay, love?' Fine, I say, feeling my way around the back of the screen in search of an on switch.'
It's a mix of detailing the life story of an exceptional young lady who was unrecognised except by her peers in life, showing her wit and humour in the only way possible after her death, and at the same time explaining the disorder to those who don't understand it and showing the true dangers of it. Debbie almost substituted her work for food, and the analogy was used in the book that her work was her food, but in doing so she gave her life to her work, and more literally than most.


===View of anorexia===

From my point of view as a sufferer, the book gave a very realistic view of someone who suffers from anorexia. The lies, the manipulation, the use of something else to take the mind away from work. Even the jokes, most anorexics wouldn't go as far as Debbie did, but it's an easy way to dodge actual concern on the issue. Most people joke about their weight, and it's the easiest way for an anorexic to get out of the frying pan as the saying goes. Everyone knows that an anorexic will dodge matters of weight or say that they are fat, so when faced with someone who says that they are thin and makes a joke of it all suspicion tends to go. It's an almost failsafe defence mechanism and one which Debbie uses very well: 'It's not the idea of food I object to. I adore food. I just can't bring myself to swallow. But how many girls have said that at Christmas parties? Usually with their knickers round their ankles in the stationary cupboards'.

All anorexics are different, all anorexics find different ways to hide their behaviour and pretend that everything is absolutely fine. But the basics are all there in the way Debbie acts, the cutting herself off from family and friends, but never to the point they get too worried. Doing everything on the computer so that she doesn't need to communicate with the real world face to face and show just how much weight she had truly lost.

I know that it is a major and realistic fear for many that these sorts of books will egg them on, give them tips and send them on a downwards spiral. This is very sensitively written and is in no way written so that it could almost become a manual. Personally, and I understand that everyone is different, I had no issue in that sense with this book, but if you believe it would be a trigger I would probably advise staying away.

===My reaction===

I enjoyed reading this book from the beginning to the end. It isn't one in which you are desperate to know how the ending turns out, because you know that from the very beginning. It is however a book which is written very sensitively, and allows the reader to learn about someone who would otherwise be forgotten, and gives some form of understanding about a disorder which is often completely misrepresented.

It's obviously a very truthful book, and one which must have taken an amazing amount of courage for her father to write, because it means facing up to his grief and truly thinking about Debbie as a person from the rest of the world's perspective and not just as his daughter. For that I can only have utmost respect for the man.

I would recommend just about anyone to this book, obviously it is not suitable for children, but any adult or teenage readers would find it both inspiring and educational and at the same time a very good read. Some of the jokes get a little old upon re-reading, but that's the same with any joke, but even with that the actual book itself can be re-read many a time.

Summary: Interesting, well written and worth a read.