Review: "Can you rate your pain from one through ten?"
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 22, 2012
Andy Borowitz is an award-winning comedian and bestselling author whose work often appears in The New Yorker, Huffington Post and at his own BorowitzReport. To say that he has a large following in social media would be a great understatement.But hisAn Unexpected Twist, released as a Kindle Single in 2012 showed a different side to this often-satirical humorist as he recounts his near-death experience while undergoing emergency abdominal surgery in a major hospital in New York City.This short seriocomic memoir has its start on a Wednesday afternoon in October 2008, when the author and his wife Olivia are finishing lunch at a local Mediterranean restaurant in NYC, not far from their apartment. For days Borowitz had been having "weird symptoms: bloated stomach, abdominal pains." He writes it off to constipation, and like so many of us, goes to the Internet for a remedy. But the solution of prune juice and exercise doesn't work, and as it worsens, this leads to a fast visit to a local emergency room. This is where the intake nurse asks him, "Can you rate your pain on a scale of one to ten?"His answer and what follows make this 18-page short tale a fast but good read, one that had this reader laughing at his descriptions, including those of the hospital staff and one particular surgeon. Borowitz describes him as "a very pleasant Chinese gentleman of few words. He speaks perfect English but he's chosen to speak it in a very abbreviated, clipped fashion, sort of like Confucius on Twitter."There are some serious moments as well, and some of them can be quite sobering. For those who expect Borowitz to jump out at the end with one of his characteristic satirical jabs, there is a surprise, and it's quite touching. For this reader, it was easy to understand why this title hit the number one position on Amazon's Kindle Single chart, and became the first nonfiction Kindle Single to make The Wall Street Journal bestseller list, where it debuted at number six.As an admitted fan and follower of his jabs and occasional rants that appear in The New Yorker, this reader can highly recommend the author'sThe 50 Funniest American Writers* *According to Andy Borowitz: An Anthology of Humor from Mark Twain to The Onion, as it's one of the better humor anthologies found today. This one coincidentally was also a best seller here on Amazon, along with hitting the New York Times bestseller list. Amazon named it the number-one Entertainment Book of the Year in 2011.An Unexpected Twist, is a good one if you have ever had, or come close to having, a near-death experience. For anyone who has ever gone through any colonic procedures, even a light one, there are moments of humorous empathy that you'll find here. It's a good, fast read, and highly recommended.10/22/2012