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I adored this memoir, – soaked straight through with so much warmth, intimacy, and candor that it would be impossible for any human with a beating heart not to be moved.
This searingly-heartfelt exposé will reach your deepest corners as you experience first-hand the diagnosis, treatment, and mind-numbing journey through to the other side, through the eyes of a breast-cancer survivor.
A truly gifted author, the connection established with this reader was in word, hypnotic – the combination of the writing style (gloriously evocative) and the level and depth of emotional revelations, (both those presented as the author was growing up and those of the current time frame), – I knew this woman and parts of her were (and are) me.
The innocence of youth and the dawn of pubescent body shaming; the years of frenzied slimming; the never-ending battle between the focus on cultivated “attractiveness” and the secret shame of playing homage to misogyny – we are collectively (and personally) out-of-touch with women’s’ bodies, healthy bodies, and the joy and freedom, as children, our bodies evoked.
What happens to our values, identities, world views, ideas, friendships, hopes and dreams when the “One Body” we have been granted ages or become racked with life-threatening illness?
How confident are we (any of us) that we can cope with whatever happens to us? Accept reality and move beyond?
With penetrating, sardonic observations reminiscent of some of the harder-edged pennings of Marian Keyes, the loneliness, despair and incredible isolation raised as the sick endure treatment will break your heart as it opens your eyes to an entirely unknown world.
“Patients in the chemo ward lying on beds separated by magazine racks and bins of surgical waste, as they lay being poisoned to stay alive”.
As the author’s healing journey slowly morphs into a life-altering re-assembly of the building blocks of her life, it becomes equally apparent to the reader, that there is no turning back, no “recovery” back to life as it existed before.
“I needed to look inward, to examine the experience of cancer. I had a lot of mental sorting and filing still to do. I may have been moving through it, but I was far from moving beyond it.”
A great big thank you to the author, and the publisher for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.
My stop today on the #LovesBookTours #blogtour for #Onebody by @catherinesimpsonwriter @sarabandbooks @cath_simpson13 #Lovebookstours
