At the age of 21, Sarah Manguso developed a neurological disease so rare it didn't even have a real name. A wildly unpredictable disease that appeared suddenly and tore through her twenties, vanishing and then returning, paralyzing her for weeks at a time, programming her first to expect nothing from life and then, furiously, to expect everything. In wry and unsentimental prose, Manguso re-counts her nine-year struggle with this enigmatic affliction and its treatments, from emergency blood cleansings and collapsed veins to addiction and depression, to perhaps the unkindest cut of all for a writer - the trite metaphors that accompany prolonged illness. Ultimately, through, hers is not so much a chronicle of triumph or tragedy as it is simply a story about learning to pay attention. Alternating between moments of acute sensitivity and extraordinary detachment with grace and self-awareness, Manguso mangers to train our eyes anew on the meaning of illness and survival.

Published: 2008

No. pages: 181

ISBN: 9780980517927

Condition: GOOD - hardcover with dustjacket - 290g