Review: An amazing memoir!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 10, 2013
This memoir about a woman's experience of bowel cancer, told through diary entries, is all the more amazing because what is happening is ongoing rather than tidily tucked away in the past. There is something extraordinarily refreshing about the writer's honesty and openness in talking of her bodily and mental functions in such a completely natural way.While the narrative is striking in itself, it also carries a powerful message hidden among its words. The thought of having cancer is many people's biggest fear, but the author of this ebook shows that it is possible to carry on your life in the face of this diagnosis and and draw comfort and happiness from those you love and who love you. She can still write and think and maintain her independence. She is still on Facebook and a forum to which she belongs, connecting with others. The heart of this book is not the illness but the person it has happened to and how she is coping.At the same time, the writer is no saint. There is nothing in the slightest romantic about the tests and treatments she describes. She has her moments of irritation and resentment. But  all this somehow only makes the story more appealing. This is a real human-being talking to us, not some two-dimensional person offering a high-flown view of cancer. This book shows us the illness as a microcosm of life itself - often painful, messy or worrisome, but with its compensations always flowing underneath.This is a writer who, through her wish to express the emotions and thoughts that surround her health experience, has discovered a powerful and individual voice. It is no surprise to read that her fiction has found a traditional publisher, although there must be heartache that this came at the same time as her cancer. The value of this memoir cannot be overestimated. Anyone who has ever been seriously ill, or has had a friend or someone in the family seriously ill, will relate to it and laugh and cry along with it. Can any writer ask for a better reception for her work? I look forward to reading more of this narrative (of which this ebook is Part 1) and also the remarkable fiction that will inevitably grow out of this experience.