The Pulling

When I've been overtaken, I have stood and watched the water in my porridge simmer away into the air, and then the oats turn black and crackle with dryness, and my ears fill with the smoke alarm's shriek.

When Adele Dumont is diagnosed with trichotillomania - compulsive hair-pulling - it makes sense of much of her life to date. The seemingly harmless quirk of her late teens, which rapidly developed into almost uncontrollable urges and then into trance-like episodes, is a hallmark of the disease, as is the secrecy with which she guarded her condition from her family, friends, and the world at large.

The diagnosis also opens up a rich line of inquiry. Where might the origins of this condition be found? How can we distinguish between a nervous habit and a compulsion? And how do we balance the relief of being 'seen' by others with our experience of shame?

The Pulling is a fascinating exploration of the inner workings of a mind. In perfectly judged prose, both probing and affecting, Dumont illuminates how easily ritual can slide into obsession, and how close beneath the surface horror and darkness can lie.


'An engrossing account of living with trichotillomania ... there is a compelling Lawrentian rawness to the way she depicts her condition and its possible origins.'
-Steven Carroll, The Sydney Morning Herald

'Despite the very specific nature of the subject, the memoir speaks to a broad readership- to anyone who has felt the isolation of difference, whether "being" different or simply feeling it.'
-Jane Turner Goldsmith, The Conversation

'The Pulling is an intimate and intricately crafted book, a meditation on privacy and the intensity and complexity of interiority, and the ways in which we might maintain this against and within - without losing - the world. It resists the easy narratives and language of illness, and all that these reduce, and is interested instead in the fascination of compulsion, what it offers and might mean. Dumont's writing is both vulnerable and fierce, critical and beautifully detailed, and generous above all else.'
-Fiona Wright, author of Small Acts of Disappearance