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A review by hmgelo02
Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
3.0
Although this book is only a few hundred pages long, it took me almost a year to finish reading. I found myself reading a chapter here and there when I had nothing else in the house, but ultimately, every time, I put it down in favor of something else.
I don't know why. This was not a difficult book to read, nor was it uninteresting, or poorly written. On the contrary; this is the story of a young girl who was diagnosed with cancer of her jaw at a very young age, and grew up spending more time in the hospital and in recovery than she did in school or with friends. This is the story of a young girl who could not build an identity based on her looks because those looks were changing with every surgery and chemotherapy and radiation treatment. This is the story of a young girl's ostracism from the world because of health obstacles that were fully out of her hands.
My sister passed this book on to me; I assume that it had been assigned reading for her in one of her special education college courses due to the 'used textbooks' sticker on its spine. If this had been required reading for a class I was taking, I probably could have knocked it out in a day or less. For me, a book of this length and style of writing would certainly be finished that quickly. I guess it just didn't hold my attention the way other books do.
I don't know why. This was not a difficult book to read, nor was it uninteresting, or poorly written. On the contrary; this is the story of a young girl who was diagnosed with cancer of her jaw at a very young age, and grew up spending more time in the hospital and in recovery than she did in school or with friends. This is the story of a young girl who could not build an identity based on her looks because those looks were changing with every surgery and chemotherapy and radiation treatment. This is the story of a young girl's ostracism from the world because of health obstacles that were fully out of her hands.
My sister passed this book on to me; I assume that it had been assigned reading for her in one of her special education college courses due to the 'used textbooks' sticker on its spine. If this had been required reading for a class I was taking, I probably could have knocked it out in a day or less. For me, a book of this length and style of writing would certainly be finished that quickly. I guess it just didn't hold my attention the way other books do.