I Had Brain Surgery, What's Your Excuse? [Paperback]

Suzy Becker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 2005

Now in paperback, the ingenious illustrated memoir that is widely praised:

“Hilarious, hell-raising, and frequently heart-wrenching.” —Booklist

“[A] unique tragicomedy of a memoir . . . The author is so likable, even in her darkest hour, that as you applaud her recovery you also realize you’ll miss looking after her.” —Entertainment Weekly (“A” rating)

“Compelling reading . . . Becker has turned one person’s experience into a universal story of family, healing, and the return to creativity.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“A wonderful book, funny and touching, harrowing and sweet.” —Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird

For years Suzy Becker, author of the New York Times bestseller All I Need to Know I Learned from My Cat (1.7 million copies in print), literally lived by her wits. Then brain surgery left her temporarily unable to speak, read, or write. I Had Brain Surgery, What's Your Excuse? is a story that grapples with the question “What makes me me?” By turns philosophical and whimsical, rivetingly dramatic and unexpectedly light, it is illustrated with drawings, charts, pseudoserious graphs, real EEGs. The result is a book filled with insights into creativity, identity, love, relationships, family, and that intangible something that gives each of us our spark.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Cartoonist and writer Becker (All I Need to Know I Learned from My Cat) sloughed off her repeated seizures as stress-related and lived with the strangeness of periodic episodes for three and half years, until a friend witnessed an attack in May 1999. Becker finally sought medical testing and underwent brain surgery. Her memoir loosely brackets the year around her procedure, from the initial diagnosis to the long, slow recovery, when unpredicted side effects interfered with her speech and even her thought processes. As Becker's healing slogs along at a snail's pace, she wonders, "Up until now, I didn't know things were missing until I went looking for them.... What about the things I don't think to look for?" Such problems assailed the essence of Becker's talents for being funny and easily expressing herself through words and drawing. Her struggle to recuperate has a profound effect on relationships and changes her own expectations about being a friend, lover and family member. As anyone might, Becker asks herself, "What if my life is a life I don't want to live?" But with the help of others and her slowly returning sense of humor, she eventually recreates a life she recognizes as her own, one in which she even completes a strenuous AIDS fund-raising bike ride and begins a competitive writing fellowship. Becker's deeply personal and surprisingly funny account intersperses text with such whimsical additions as Becker's "Cardiac Exercise Tolerance" and kooky cartoons.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

To say that Becker, the author-illustrator of the best-seller All I Need to Know, I Learned from My Cat (1990), has a funny way of looking at things would be an understatement. Quick quips and a deft hand are her stock-in-trade, her peculiar perspective defining not only her life but also her livelihood. The diagnosis that the intermittent seizures she'd been experiencing were the result of a mass on her brain that would require surgical removal left Becker with one fear: after the operation, will I still be me? Becker's hilarious, hell-raising, and frequently heart-wrenching account of her johnny-gowned journey through the medical maze of MDs, MRIs, and HMOs is joyous testament to the fact that she made it out not only alive but with all her essential, irrepressible Becker-ness still intact. Comically accompanied by keepsake notes, clippings, and her own inimitable cartoons, Becker's mirthful memoir should be required reading for anyone who has ever been seriously ill; might one day become seriously ill; knows someone who was, is, or might be seriously ill; or all of the above. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Workman Publishing Company (August 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0761139796
• ISBN-13: 978-0761139799
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #691,633 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Becker's deep, funny, provocative and inspiring memoir, February 24, 2004

By 

Karen Sauvigne (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Had Brain Surgery, What's Your Excuse? (Hardcover)

I cried quietly. I laughed aloud. My head hurt. My heart ached. And I've had trouble putting down this nuanced and splendidly illustrated memoir chronicling Suzy Becker's recognition that her seizure-like "stress episodes" were caused by a tumor that required brain surgery, and her journey through preparation, surgery and recovery. An award-winning best selling author-illustrator, Becker was staggered to discover that her language skills had been "stolen" by the surgery. This innovative narrative of her quest for recovery is enriched with her cartoons, graphics and commentary revealing a complex array of responses. Her humor lets the reader look at her ordeal with some of the empathy she craved during the recovery; and her honesty lets us see the pain and courage of her fight to regain her self. I admire the boldness and beauty of this reflection, the penning of which she characterizes as her recovery.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From a brain tumor physician, February 25, 2005

By 

Brain doc (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: I Had Brain Surgery, What's Your Excuse? (Hardcover)

Tragic, comic and beautifully written, I will recommend this book to my patients anticipating surgery.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly unique reading experience, April 16, 2004

By 

Brooke T. "Reader" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Had Brain Surgery, What's Your Excuse? (Hardcover)

This book surprised me in so many ways. Knowing the author's other works, I expected it to be witty and thoughtful, but I was surprised by the emotion I felt reading it, and by its amazing complexity. There is considerable humor in the book, but there is so much more. While I know this book will be of interest and inspiration to anyone who has had brain surgery or any kind of life-threatening illness or harrowing medical experience, I also believe that the story is so universal and accessible, as it charts the author's dealings with her doctors, her family, and her own physical and mental limits, that it will appeal to anyone who picks it up and starts to read it. I was sad when it was over, because I wanted it to go on and on. And then there is the incredible design of the book, composed of cartoons, charts, quotes, and various other types of illustration, all woven in smoothly with the text. It's a truly original artistic and literary work.