To Feel Stuff »

ANDREA SEIGEL is the author of Like the Red Panda. Twenty-six years old, she's currently working on her MFA from Bennington College and lives in Los Angeles.

To Feel Stuff is the story of Elodie Harrington, medical anomaly. Elodie is a sufferer of mysterious and frequent illnesses- so frequent, in fact, that her poor health forces her to live in the Brown University infirmary.

In the winter of her junior year, while recovering from a bout of tuberculosis, two major events occur in Elodie's isolated life. First, big-man-on-campus Chess Hunter enters the infirmary after having his knees bashed in during an a cappella performance, and Elodie begins an intense romance with him. Secondly, she begins to see a ghost.

Believing that her barrage of illnesses has produced a supernatural change in her- specifically an ability to see the dead- Elodie turns to Dr. Kirschling to help her prove the phenomenon.

Kirschling, a Brown medical school professor and practicing doctor, sees potential in Elodie. Convinced he'll be a hero within his profession if he can crack the cause behind her bizarre afflictions, Kirschling makes a deal with his patient. If she'll give him access to her life and let him write an article about her, then he'll keep the University from kicking her out of school.

What Kirchling hasn't prepared himself for is the possibility that Elodie might be right, that she's really going through what he starts to refer to as "psychic puberty."

Publishers Weekly

Seigel's sophomore effort is a scattershot case study in illness, love and the unexplained. Elodie Harrington is an undergraduate at Brown University who lives in the college infirmary, suffering from a series of unrelated illnesses "piggybacked one upon another," so that she never fully recovers. Her story is told from three points of view-Dr. Mark Kirschling's account of her confounding symptoms in the Journal of Parapsychology and letters between Elodie and Chester Hunter III, a fellow undergrad she meets in the infirmary. Though the structure is a bit contrived (the letters and journal article are filled with dialogue), each section picks up with little repetition. As Chester mends and Elodie get sicker, it becomes clear that their blossoming love is threatened by the specter of health. It doesn't all hold up to close scrutiny, but Seigel has crafted believable characters to anchor the fantastical circumstances, and it's a testament to her ability to captivate that the book ends at what feels like just the beginning. (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.