Hell Days:
Into the Inferno of Hormonal Mood Disorder
Buy ebook
Hell Days:
Into the Inferno of Hormonal Mood Disorder
Overview
When I think of my hell days, I think of crime scenes. Familiar sites, made uncanny with violence.
In the fluorescent tedium of a call centre in 2018, acclaimed novelist Laura Elizabeth Woollett finds herself meticulously plotting her own death. Until her period arrives, and equilibrium with it. After years of dismissing these monthly turns, she’s diagnosed with premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Then, at 33, she falls pregnant and experiences a reprieve — but will it last?
Through case studies, interviews, extensive medical research, and forays into history, true crime, and algorithmic rabbit-holes, Woollett looks beyond herself to assemble a chorus of PMDD sufferers, along with dedicated scientists and clinicians. Navigating the impossible terrain between a potentially fatal disorder and treatments that can be almost as dangerous, Hell Days is a testament to the precarity and dignity of life as a periodically suicidal person in an often-brutal world.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Rights held
- Paperback
- 198mm x 129mm
- 336 pages
- 9781914484841
- GBP£12.99
- 10 September 2026
- World
Praise
‘An immaculately researched and thought-provoking book about a disorder that history has failed to understand and the disordered world that prevents people from understanding themselves ... A must-read for anyone with PMDD.’
‘Hell Days is a sharp and searching exploration of female embodiment, female anger, and all of the hidden, unacknowledged ways that these might shape us, even as we push against them. It brings into conversation Woollett’s experience of PMDD and that of other women, as well as rigorous medical and historical research, and also works to recast and reclaim narratives around “art motherhood” as a space of relief, creativity, and joy.’
About the Author
Laura Elizabeth Woollett is an author and critic based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her short story collection, The Love of a Bad Man, was published in 2016, followed by the novels Beautiful Revolutionary (2018), The Newcomer (2021), and West Girls (2023). Her works have been listed for numerous awards, including the Stella Prize and the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction. In 2025, she was a writer-in-residence at the Cité Internationale Des Arts in Paris. Hell Days (2026) is her nonfiction debut.