In a recent clinical supervision session at work, we were talking about ‘high-functioning freeze‘. I happened to be reading Girl, 1983 by Linn Ullmann at the time, and I immediately thought of the protagonist.

What happened to the protagonist – and if this book was called Girl, 2025, we would say that she had been sexually assaulted – unfolds in a series of vignettes. A sixteen-year-old girl is in Paris in 1983, alone, on a modelling assignment with a notable photographer, known only as ‘K’. On her first day in the city, she gets lost in the labyrinth of streets and can’t remember where her hotel is. In desperation, she goes to K’s studio, and the day turns into evening and then the next morning. There’s alcohol, cocaine and nightclubs involved.

If K can’t remember me – the sixteen-year-old girl who turned up on his doorstep one night – is everything that happened between us (and which I promised not to tell anyone) still our secret? Or is it only mine? Continue reading →