It is a pleasure to welcome award-winning author Stewart Foster to the blog.  Stewart is the author of numerous books including The Bubble Boy which won the Sainsbury’s Children’s Book Award and was nominated for the Carnegie Medal.  Stewart’s acclaimed novels tackle emotionally sophisticated subjects with an honest eye.  His books have been included in the Reading Well and on Empathy Lab lists.  Here Stewart discusses his motivations in writing his latest novel, Pieces of Us, and why talking about eating disorders, particularly with young males is so important .

I once told a friend that I was scared about writing any articles about Pieces of Us, for fear that my words would be picked apart by medical experts or those in families where eating disorders have become an issue. This ‘fear’ is mostly generated by a post I placed on social media a couple of years ago, where I asked if there were any books on the subject of eating disorders, out there? That evening I received maybe thirty replies, mostly along the lines of, it’s a subject that shouldn’t be discussed in Young Adult fiction for fear of triggering behaviours and also, stick to writing fiction because you don’t know what you are talking about.

I sat scrolling the replies, thinking, oh shit, what did I just do? Perhaps it is a mistake, just doing this post, but then I got a direct message from another author, an author whom I’;d spent three hours waiting for a train in deep conversation with, after a literary event. And his message said, ‘Stew, I get why some have reacted the way they have, but if anyone should write a book about male eating disorders, it’s you.’

I was, am, and always will be, so grateful for that message.

Because I totally get how sensitive the issue of male eating disorders is… I kept mine hidden from my friends and family for far too many years. I know the hurt, the pain and the shame the sufferer feels, I also know the feelings of frustration but mostly worry that it brings to a family. And how helpless both feel. And the inability, the shame, the sheer ‘It’s so stupid’ the stigma, that stop us talking about ‘It.’

That’s why I wrote Pieces of Us, so it will be on a table or a shelf in a bookshop or a library, or in a reader’s hands and someone will ask, ‘What is that book about?’ And I hope the reply will be that it is about a beautiful friendship between two boys and the problems they faced together as they grew up. The type of friendship I was lucky to have in my late teens and the ‘problems’ we both had. So when I have those worries about not having deep medical knowledge of eating disorders, I can at least say I do know what I am talking about, because I have been there, still am to a great extent. Experience and being able to write, is my main qualification. Getting people to talk about it, is my main motivation.

From the age of thirteen I would never be seen outside of my bedroom without a shirt on. Wore baggy jumpers all through six weeks of the 1977, heatwave. Went for walks on my own rather than go in the sea on holidays. So uncomfortable with my body.

There’s a scene in Pieces of Us where Jonas is out walking before an impending summer thunderstorm. His best friand, Louis, tries to get him to take off his jumper, screw it into a ball, so he can put it back on, dry, when the storm has passed. Jonas refuses because he knows his t-shirt will stick to him and the rain will show the folds of his skin. That scene was true…me and my best friend when I was sixteen.

Two years later and that discomfort with my body grew into making myself ill in order to lose weight. ‘It’ and ‘It had a name, bulimia. I didn’t know. There was no internet for information then.

No one to talk to about it. No one I thought would understand.

You look fine.

You’re fine.

What are you worried about?

But I did worry, almost every minute of every day, even though I absolutely loved school. Was popular I guess. Good and sport, talked lots, wrote poetry about classmates to make them laugh. Same in sixth form, but all the time my body was changing, changing into a shape I hated. Laughter would fade as my friends peeled away from me on the walk home, replaced by a sadness that I never understood where it came from, This happy-go-lucky kid, making other laugh all day, avoiding tea with his parents, making himself sick when the house was quiet. Momentarily happy, for all of ten seconds, before the shame and guilt kicked in.

And now I think back, would it have helped to have had someone to talk to? There was a chance, once, on my own at the doctors, when I had an infection caused by not drinking enough liquid, because liquid was the first thing I’d notice to affect the scales. Was everything okay? Everything alright at school? Yes. Yes. That’s all I could say because my mum was there.

Years on, I may no longer do ‘It’ but everything else is still there… the uncomfortable body, the constant exercising, the relentless battle with the scales. But I cope, and for the most part, cope well, but I know I was 77.2kg last night. 76.3 this morning. But I know longer weigh ten times in between. And I talk openly about it with my daughters as we go back over old family photos sometimes pausing if ‘Dad doesn’t look well there’. And me looking at same photo’s thinking, I look so thin when I thought I was huge.

Another friend of mine, my best friend, often tells me that I can’t help all of the people all the time. This will often come after I’ve been on a visit to a school, met someone, been told something and then telling that person that they need to talk to someone, someone they trust. But then when we are in that position, we can’t think who that person would be. And the trouble is, to me, and maybe their friends, that person can appear to be least troubled person you are likely to meet. Outwardly confident, good at sports, plenty of friends. But then the pressures of social media influencers, perfect people with perfect bodies having perfect lives. The constant barrage of images of people we are supposed to be. And we are all consumed by those images on our screens, where text messages have replaced actual real conversations.

So many people in education say ‘Read. Read. Read.;’ when I wish it was ‘Talk, Talk. Talk.’ If by being in libraries and schools, Pieces of Us can promote conversations/discussions, between students and teachers or just amongst themselves then even though as my friend says, ‘I can’t help everyone,’ I will have done my best to try.

A big thank you to Stewart Foster for the blog and to Simon and Schuster for the opportunity.