The Two Kinds of Decay: A Memoir – Sarah Manguso

Condition : Very Good.
First British Edition, Granta, 2011, Hardback with removable protective plastic wrap – Memoir – 184pp. ISBN: 9781847083081.

AT AGE TWENTY-ONE, 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, paralysing 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.

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