num_pages: 192
description: At twenty-one just as she was starting to comprehend the puzzles of adulthood Sarah Manguso was faced with another: a wildly unpredictable autoimmune disease that appeared suddenly and tore through her twenties paralyzing her for weeks at a time programming her first to expect nothing from life and then furiously to expect everything. In this captivating story Manguso recalls her struggle: arduous blood cleansings collapsed veins multiple chest catheters depression the deaths of friends and strangers addiction and worst of all for a writer the trite metaphors that accompany prolonged illness. A book of tremendous grace The Two Kinds of Decay transcends the very notion of what an illness story can and should be.
language: English
title: The Two Kinds of Decay
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux