Book review: Evanna Lynch's memoir is a spotlight on anorexia and its treatment

The Harry Potter actor wants to probe the dark side of her youth and the contemporary approach to treatment for her condition

Sun, 23 Jan, 2022 - 11:06

Review: Josephine Fenton

THE title says it all. This memoir focusses on extremes and contraries. Evanna Lynch has been in the centre of a maelstrom since she was a child.

Being a little girl suited her well as she sat in corners or under tables whilst family life whirled around her in a never ending spiral of sporting and musical activities.

Her mother, often at the eye of the storm, was busy but never too frantic to offer encouraging words to her daughter. Lynch was not short of the materials she needed — coloured pens and pencils, glue, glitter and paper — although she did sometimes have to wait outside the bathroom for her father to emerge, newspaper in hand, allowing her to duck under his arm to see if the toilet tissue was at last exhausted and the cardboard core ready for one of her creative projects.

As she reached adolescence her magical life ended. Like a wicked spell in a fairy tale, a destructive illness descended to blight her youth and beauty. An eating disorder lodged itself goblin-like inside her psyche. Her body shrank and withered, the onset of womanhood retreated, and misery spread, infecting her and her parents as they struggled under the onslaught.

Light fell upon this ‘cursed child’ in the form of JK Rowling and her Harry Potter books. Counterbalancing her own world of evil, the young magician’s troubles distracted Lynch from her personal tragedy. She wrote to the famous writer, who blessed her with replies.

However, that was not all; a miracle lurked around the corner, turning a quotidian existence into that of a film star. Lynch auditioned for, and obtained, the role of Luna Lovegood in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

After that incredible event, Lynch reprised her role in the three final films of the franchise, as well as the tie-in video games. Rowling included Lynch in her roll-call of the Big Seven actors in the series.

The author said that Lynch had “got in her head” and thus influenced the way that she wrote the character. Critics lauded Lynch’s performances and she was launched as one of Ireland’s best actresses.

However, this memoir seeks to look beyond the spotlights of international fame and the fairy lights of a happy childhood. Lynch wants to probe the dark side of her youth and the contemporary approach to treatment for her condition. She is of the opinion that her illness was badly mismanaged and that her suffering was exacerbated by misguided care.

Lynch was very unhappy and very angry but the focus, she thinks, was on her body and “getting her weight up”. It is her opinion that clinicians should have focused on her emotions rather than her physicality. The cure for her condition was psychological, not physical.

Details of hospitalisation and other interventions are harrowing and at times The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting is an uncomfortable read. It can be difficult to maintain equanimity as page after page depicts how a child was stripped of all agency, while adults made the tough decisions about the regimen she should undergo. Reading this can be akin to immersion in a Snow White-type fable.

Lynch does not wish her book to rely on her fame for its success: she aims to explain what having anorexia nervosa was like and to contribute towards the thinking on how it should be approached. The fact that she is also known as Luna Lovegood means that the book, and its creator, are receiving plenty of press attention, which can only be of help to those like her who endure the torment of such a mental illness.