- Hardcover: 184 pages
- Publisher: FSG Adult; 1 edition (Jun 2 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0374280126
- ISBN-13: 978-0374280123
- Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14.7 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #647,864 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In 1995, when Rome Prize–winning poet and fiction writer Manguso (Siste Viator) was a junior at Harvard, she suffered the first attack of a rare autoimmune disease called CIDP, which would turn her body against itself. CIDP attacks the myelin coating of the peripheral nerves. The result is increasing numbness, followed by paralysis spreading from the extremities inward, until the sufferer can no longer control his or her breathing, and dies. In short, lyrical chapters—the book free-associates between memories, while sticking to a rough chronological order—Manguso recounts the harrowing indignities of her treatments, frequent relapses, descents into steroid-induced clinical depression, crucial college sexual experiences had and missed, and trips back and forth between schools, hospitals and her parents' Massachusetts home. What makes this lightning-quick book extraordinary is not just Manguso's deadpan delivery of often unthinkable details, nor her poet's struggle with the damaging metaphors of disease, but the compassion she acquires as she comes to understand her pain in relation to the pain of others: suffering, however much and whatever type, shrinks or swells to fit the shape and size of a life. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Here is a beautiful, brave memoir that takes us into the heart of a young woman's illness, its pains and terrors and mysteries, yet leads us somehow into brightness. For all its clinical precision of the physical, The Two Kinds of Decay is one of the most movingly humane books I have read in a long time; it is a hard-earned vision of life, every word grounded in both body and soul. Sarah Manguso is a brilliantly talented writer, and this is a book not to be missed."—John Burnham Schwartz
“If art can be described as the paths one takes toward some form of compassion, this distilled and luminous book offers us one such a map. An exploration of a body at a particular moment in its history, narrated by an unsparing yet appealing consciousness, The Two Kinds of Decay brings the reader to a place of grace and compassion that is absolutely breathtaking.” —Nick Flynn
“At the white-hot center of this book burns the intelligence and wit of Sarah Manguso, one of the most brilliantly talented writers at work today. She is a clear-eyed visionary, a connoisseur of the penetrating declarative, an unsentimental chronicler of the horrifying insult of illness and of the desires that drive us headlong into adulthood. With a poet's brevity, with riveting narrative energy, with searing insight and compassion, Manguso leads us into hell and back again; every step of the way, there's the thrill of knowing we're in the hands of a new literary master.” —Julie Orringer, author of How to Breathe Underwater
"In The Two Kinds of Decay, Sarah Manguso has miraculously elevated the act of memory. She has found honesty, fear, longing and beauty in every moment of her young life, giving this book an intensity found nowhere else. You put it down panting with wonder and grief, but never with pity. A breakthrough in the memoir, and in writing." —Andrew Sean Greer
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Quick Read,
This review is from: The Two Kinds of Decay: A Memoir (Paperback)
This story was very intense and powerful, the short chapters made it a very quick read; however it did not leave an impact. The conclusion was unclear and although the content was interesting, the delivery was poor. It felt as though she needed express her illness in her art form before she was able to move beyond it. She wanted to address an important part of her life without making the trite 'I'm ill and possibly dying' type of work, but in an attempt to stray from that she simply did not put enough of herself in the book. More facts than emotions, more about what was happening to her rather than how she felt about what was happening to her. I enjoyed it because I felt I could relate to the material, but an outside eye may not make the same connections needed to make the book powerful
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.3 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews) 16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Illness Once Removed,
By C. Hutton "book maven" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Two Kinds Of Decay (Hardcover)
Ms. Manguso has written a medically graphic but affecting account of her battle with an auto-immune disease. Written in brief paragraphs with short chapters, the author is clealy recalling a bad dream that she rather not recall. A poet, her writing is lyrical and conversational. Once the reader starts her story, you will not put it down and it is easily read in one sitting. But it is a book that you will come back to.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Journey Through Hell with Humor,
By Michael Chapman - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Two Kinds Of Decay (Hardcover)
This book is a compelling read. It's a testimony to one woman's resiliance when the terrible thing happens to her, not to some stranger.
Manguso has the courage to revisit her devastating illness, and the wisdom to find the ironies, the lessons, and even the humor in her experience. Through her sharing of the story of those terrifying sick years, she lets us see the indomitable spirit and the sense of humor that enabled her to survive them and heal. She juxtaposes pictures of illness against the lyrical beauty of her writing. I find new treasures whenever I reread it. 4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Triumphant. Beautiful. I've read it 4 times.,
By Charli M. Henley "Charli Henley" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Two Kinds of Decay: A Memoir (Paperback)
This is an unsentimental and unapologetic memoir of illness. The poetry here left me breathless. The disease Manguso describes is a terrible one, but she weathers it gracefully.
The time line is not a linear one - events in the book take place as if they are just foggy memories and not a plotted story - a realistic and satisfying take on the memoir narrative. Every word is carefully placed, like an IV or a scalpel. Manguso is a surgeon-poet, wasting nothing. Very precise, very beautiful, very painful. I've read this book twice now. It was recommended to me by a stranger at a party when I revealed my own recent diagnosis of kidney failure and an autoimmune disease. The book makes me feel hopeful - if she could do it, I can do it. It makes me feel courageous. It offers solidarity in the way few others can - without pity, without tears, without fear. And yet, the book makes me cry. The story of an illness could be trite. Manguso avoids cliche and does not tell us she has learned to be a better person, that she has found God, or even that she is bitter. She tells us simply that illness forces one to live in and for the moment. While she doesn't herald this epiphany as a triumph, I certainly do. |
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