Customer Reviews

A Life Less Convenient: Letters To My Ex

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"You keep thinking that you get to keep your body. That your body stays with you just because you're stuck inside it," I said. "You don't get to keep anything, not really. Nothing's a given."

So says the narrator to her lover in Jennifer Burke's A Life Less Convenient. A novel of short stories that function rather like mediations, I was drawn in by the dispassionate voice of the narrator as she navigates through the cumulative effects of both an auto-immune disorder and love on her body.

Writes Burke in her Afterwards:

"I suspect that relationship demons constitute another type of chronic illness that is managed day to day with varying levels of commitment and different definitions of "problem," "success," and "cure.""

Indeed, what becomes "normal" in these stories is the every changing body of the narrator, and the choices she must make in order to care for herself: the train she misses because she will not run over the parking lot for fear of falling and inflicting more pain on her body; the hair that she gives as a gift to her lover; the food she refuses to eat in order to stall severe stomach pains.

Love is often calculated in terms of the cost of the psyche. Rarely I have read the costs it can exact on flesh and bones.

This book caused me to rethink how I move through the world. How I eat. What it means to run. Burke's haunting writing made me examine so many unacknowledged assessments I have made about myself in this world, my world of love and shrimp and hair.

If you have but little time - or a lot - read this book. It might just change your life.

I absolutely cannot begin to explain how deeply I enjoyed this book. I could not put it down. I carried it everywhere and finished it quickly. I wished that the stories would not end. The details are just
beautiful. The book addressed some very universal issues about romantic relationships and about ways in which we are alone, whether it is illness or some other defining characteristic(s). When I finished it, I had that rare feeling of loss, of craving more pages. I will pass the word around about this fabulous book, and the book itself. It is a true work of art. The author's writing is incredibly beautiful and powerful, as are the color photographs. There was not one story that could not stand
on its own as a masterpiece. I've been wanting to write a review about
it but have felt so overwhelmingly in awe of it, that I have been hesitant to sum it up.

Burke's prose is utterly fantastic. I devoured the novel within hours and found myself underlining random sentences that were just too brilliant to forget. Photos are sprinkled throughout the text, giving the reader even more sensory delight.

Burke's stories are woven together and defined by love, loss, and hope. It is this combination which leaves the reader yearning for more. After turning the last page of the novel, I immediately hoped for a sequel.

This novel is one not to be missed. Burke's story-telling genius and the fabulous photos make this novel one-of-a-kind.

From what can only be described as an intellectually and emotionally astute perspective, this story hits the soul hard and fast leaving only what the author deemed truly necessary to the imagination.

Author Burke will certainly have you smiling and on occasion very excitedly. Often, though, I was left wistful, my heart moved and solemnly empathetic to the plights stalwartly endured by the author. I found myself needing to pause at several instances throughout the novel to tend to misty veils in which I would lose and then find myself utterly floored and unable to continue for an awed moment or three.

It was an honour experiencing Ms. Burke's visceral and no-holds-barred literary style as seen throughout her Letters; each one peeling back yet another delicate layer of intricately brilliant Grace throughout the story's storm of wayward or waning moments of Love, Health and Life.

While A Life Less Convenient may not be for the most timorous of hearts, Ms. Burke's hauntingly unique and compelling voice will surely serve to elegantly educate and engage to the point of forgetting oneself and leave you wanting for much, much more.

I loved this book. I read the whole thing in one sitting and was left wanting more. The author's approach to narration is completely fresh, the letters and images will stay with you. We come to know the author through her disease and vulnerability, but we discover the patience, kindness, understanding and warmth she experiences to cope with her illness. Those of us who enjoy stories about how challenging and difficult, yet brilliant and extraordinary the human condition is, will love this book.

A Life Less Convenient will touch you.

An amazing experience to read and view. I want more and hope there is not only a sequel but a prequel, too.

"A life less convenient" offers an honest portrait of a side of Love that is not often seen on Literature: disease, pain, fatigue, medication... from a patient's point of view. "A life less convenient" made me push deeper and challenge my own thought patterns. Jen Burke's will continue to be an inspiration for years to come as a writer and as a person who prevails despite the turmoil.

Honestly I was a tiny bit hesitant to pick up a book on a subject that touches too close to my heart, that of disease & it's effects on the body and body image.

But Burke writes with such exquisite, delicate prose that I didn't feel wieghed down with the enormity of what's happening, but instead I was drawn in and pulled along from chapter to chapter, captivated and unable to even put the book down until I'd finished it.

The photographs were as spellbinding as the story is heartbreaking and ultimately uplifting. It's one of my best reads this year.

This is a beautiful book. I kept on thinking how much I'd like to write a book like this. I read it in one night and wanting more. I am looking forward to reading more of her work in the future.

I have never read a book that lays out the struggles of an illness as insightful as A Life Less Convenient (ALLC) does. Jennifer Burke deserves a great deal of accolades for putting together this magnificent journey into the love affair a terminal illness has with one's body. The ex presented in this book is a conglomeration of several people in the narrator's life over the beginning years of her diagnosis. Her body is taken over and controlled by Lupus, and her relationships provide the emotional support she desperately needs...until her illness reels her back in and continues to destroy everything in its path, including her relationships.

A Life Less Convenient tore at my heartstrings. I saw not just illness, but reflective and insightful understanding of how a relationship had failed. In the matter-of-fact reflectiveness of the narrator, there is no blame. There is just the illness and the way both parties handled it; and that's it. It just was. After a period of time, the end of any relationship "just was". There is no innocent party and there is no guilty party. In any relationship, both parties deal with situations the best way they no how - right or wrong, it just `is'. Burke does an excellent job using Lupus as the vehicle for getting this idea across.

ALLC is a series of letters to `an Ex'. Each letter is in essence a short story depicting a different period of time in the evolution of the narrator's dealings with Lupus. ALLC gives interesting insight into what people dealing with a terminal illness deals with and I suspect, will be an insightful book for those who love people with some form of terminal illness. Throughout ALLC, Burke has done an excellent job of incorporating fantastic images that portray fear, love, frustration and angst. These images are disturbing to a large degree, but help the reader understand the many facets of emotion involved with dealing with terminal illness. The letters in this book are fictitious in that names, times, situations have been changed or made up. ALLC is the writer's way of trying to explain what was really happening to her and why its so difficult to maintain healthy relationships when one is battling an illness like Lupus.

Burke explains in a honest, open, insightful way all the physical limitations that caused the demise of a relationship.
Her writing allows us to understand the feelings of vulnerability that people dealing with a terminal illness may not be able to explain.

Each letter in ALLC is a little more insightful than the last. Every letter shows incredible growth and insight into the understanding of the human factor and how relationships are affected by different obstacles.

ALLC would be a great resource for people struggling to understand the emotional, physical and relationship issues involved with a terminal illness, like Lupus. This book has the ability to provide a starting point for open and honest conversation and understanding between both parties involved in dealing with a terminal illness. This book should be recommended reading at the first diagnosis of a terminal illness.