The State of Me

I've read Nasim Marie Jafry's blog for the last 18 months. She's funny, clever, observant, wry, down to earth, and I've always thought that if I met her over a coffee, we'd laugh about gardens, the weather, sleep, blogging/bloggers, mice and cooker hoods. I've tried to remember how I came upon NMJ's blog, and why I instantly added it to my bookmarks. There was no big reason (the name of her blog made me scrunch my brow). She simply had a voice that I wanted to listen to, having read a few entries.

It was therefore no great surprise to me that I greatly enjoyed NMJ's book The State of Me, which I finished over the weekend. I read it fairly slowly, as I do when reading books that are penned mainly in the first person. When well-written, I savour such works. It feels to me as though someone I know is talking to me, telling me things, confiding.

The State of Me is about a young woman, Helen Fleet, who is flawed, funny and feisty. Nasim takes us from Helen's fireworks of adolescent-on-the-cusp to her fading fast and burning out as illness takes hold of her and sits her firmly down – for the best part of a decade, at least. The sense of Helen's isolation and inwardness is made clearly apparent in the way the story is told. It made me feel sad and guilty for not knowing what this thing called ME/CFS/Yuppie flu (ugh) really is, and how devastating its effects are. I'd heard of it, of course, but I didn't really get it until now. It was abstract, a bit strange, hard to grasp... (but in retrospect I blame the doubters who communicated – or miscommunicated – this confusion to the likes of me when it first came to light...).

Having said that, The State of Me does not set out to be a novel equivalent of a documentary. Yes, Nasim enlightens the reader, if the reader chooses to listen. But the essence is a damn good story – there's the undulating relationship between Helen and Ivan that comes and goes, comes and goes... The constancy of Helen's mother, stepfather and uncle, and one friend, Jana, root her and give her life. Even if she is not living to the full physically, Helen has the full repertoire of emotions... Helen's love, Ivan, is drawn particularly well. I liked him immensely and though at times he did not behave impeccably, you could understand why, though you hated some of his deeds for what they did to the protagonist.

Nasim possesses the arts of understatement and careful observation that, on several occasions, disarmed me. I loved that some of her references seemed as though they were aimed specifically at me. That surely is the writer's ultimate aim – to be able to connect through the pages of a book using certain words that are so well-chosen that they spark the synapses like Christmas tree lights?

My feeling as I put The State of Me back on to my book shelf, was that this novel is a highly impressive, enjoyable debut and, I hope, the precursor to many more books by NMJ...

But I understand also that TSoM was written by a woman battling ME. That itself is a feat beyond the as-if-that-were-not-enough feat of having a book successfully published. I commend NMJ for her remarkable achievements, wish her extremely rude health and hope to one day toast her in person in an Edinburgh café when ME, for my blog friend(s) and all who have suffered ME (and its allied misunderstandings and unnecessary battles), is just a memory.