When the only thing left is nothing

When the Only Thing Left is Nothing is a novel that explores themes of addiction, trauma, and the possibility of recovery. The story follows small-town dancer Brianna five years after she rebrands herself as Rhiannon in New York. The story begins when Rhi is called back to her home in Prince Edward Island after her brother, Drew, gets into a drunk driving accident. As Rhi confronts the familial past that she has ignored for so long, she drifts in and out of memories that continue to inform her present. Though the story spans both past and present, I have rendered the story entirely in the present tense. This choice was informed by trauma scholarship around time perception and memory formation. I drew from a series of academic and non-academic sources on the nature of addiction and recovery to develop the treatment of alcoholism in this text. I consulted psychological and medical studies, as well as non-academic resources on treatment and support. I also considered addiction and mental health-related activism and drew from my own lived experiences. One of the goals of this project was to provide an alternative conception of what it means to recover, and how social and familial pressure to be successful and “well” often undermine the recovery process. In building this thematic element of the text I drew largely from Arthur Frank’s writing on recovery, as well as from the Buddhist philosophical underpinnings of mindfulness in order to explore other non-linear modes of recovery.Arts, Faculty ofGraduat