A Beautiful Person Battles Her Physical and Psychic Scars

books:

	• Autobiography of a Face Lucy Grealy Harper Perennial, 2003 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 107 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Heartwrenching, beautiful and memorable!

The tone of the book is what I will carry with me. She writes with such a lonely, depressing perspective and yet, her beautiful, small intricate details of life carried the story. It was hard to put down, hard to read at times with the vivid detail of chemotherapy, but will be one of my favorites. It has some fun and funny passages, and I am sorry she is no longer here in this world to talk about her experiences.

Review of Autobiography of a Face

Autobiography of a Face was Lucy Grealy's first book and an inspiring insight into her battle with cancer, and life in the years afterward. The majority of the story takes place during her earlier years of life intermixed between her suburban home and hospital care.
From the science side of things, not much information is given about her cancer or the biology involved with it. But, the book gave me a clearer understanding of what it's like to live with cancer. The detailed descriptions of the pain and suffering involved through chemotherapy treatment was something you can't get from a purely informational source, and I believe the book's emotional vie of cancer helped with my understanding of specifically Ewing Sarcoma Tumors and other types of cancer as well. When compared with the technology available at the time of her diagnosis and the aspects of Ewing sarcomas in general, Lucy's story is truly remarkable. EWS are very rare, and the chance of survival, especially at the time, make Lucy's case even more of a miracle.
Because Lucy Grealy's cancer scarred her teenage years the most, I was able to place myself in her position and imagine being treated the way she was. I admire her strength and courage to face the dramatic world of high school, day after day while people constantly criticized her facial scarring. I also admire her ability to control herself so well while in immense pain. I would never be able to keep a complacent composure while receiving chemotherapy. I also admire her strive to surpass physical beauty, by understanding the true inner beauty in seemingly ordinary things.

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A Beautiful Person Battles Her Physical and Psychic Scars

Lucy Grealy writes poignantly and poetically about the way her battles with cancer
of the jaw have affected her life since childhood. This autobiography chronicles
her surgeries, struggles, denial and, finally, acceptance of herself as the mirror of
her face. Facing things might be an apt metaphor here.

The metaphor of face, along with her identification of self as she deals with the
ravages wrought on her face, are examined from many different vantage points.
At first, Ms. Grealy is in denial that she has become different looking. She then
avoids any acknowledgment of how she's changed post-surgeries.

The story shows no self-pity. Rather, she shares the evolution of her life, family,
and growing self-awareness in a chronology of events marked by treatments and
surgeries. This is a beautiful book!!!!

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Raw

Grealy is honest without being sorry about it, and amazingly doesn't come across as feeling sorry for herself at all. In fact, she told her story with candor and dark humor.

I didn't like it as well as Truth & Beauty - Ann Patchett writes in a style I prefer, and she was easier to relate to in general, since she's more like all of us than Lucy Grealy ever had the chance to be.

Nonetheless, Grealy's autobiography was moving, and a worthwhile read.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

"I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I've spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison."

At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a potentially terminal cancer. When she returned to school with a third of her jaw removed, she faced the cruel taunts of classmates. In this strikingly candid memoir, Grealy tells her story of great suffering and remarkable strength without sentimentality and with considerable wit. Vividly portraying the pain of peer rejection and the guilty pleasures of wanting to be special, Grealy captures with unique insight what it is like as a child and young adult to be torn between two warring impulses: to feel that more than anything else we want to be loved for who we are, while wishing desperately and secretly to be perfect.

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