Fracture: Adventures of a Broken Body

The starting point of Ann Oakley's fascinating new book is the fracture of her right arm in the grounds of a hotel in the USA What begins as an accident becomes a journey into some critical themes of modern Western culture the crisis of embodiment and the perfect self: the confusion between body and identity; the commodification of bodies and body parts; the intrusive surveillance and profiteering of medicine and the law; the problem of ageing; and the identification of women, particularly with bodies - from the intensely ambiguous two-in-one state of pregnancy to women's later transformation into unproductive, brittle skeletons.