The Two Kinds of Decay: A Memoir [Paperback]

Sarah Manguso (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 26, 2009

At twenty-one, just as she was starting to comprehend the puzzles of adulthood, Sarah Manguso was faced with another: a wildly unpredictable autoimmune disease that appeared suddenly and tore through her twenties, paralyzing her for weeks at a time, programming her first to expect nothing from life and then, furiously, to expect everything. In this captivating story, Manguso recalls her struggle: arduous blood cleansings, collapsed veins, multiple chest catheters, depression, the deaths of friends and strangers, addiction, and, worst of all for a writer, the trite metaphors that accompany prolonged illness. A book of tremendous grace, The Two Kinds of Decay transcends the very notion of what an illness story can and should be.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In 1995, when Rome Prize–winning poet and fiction writer Manguso (Siste Viator) was a junior at Harvard, she suffered the first attack of a rare autoimmune disease called CIDP, which would turn her body against itself. CIDP attacks the myelin coating of the peripheral nerves. The result is increasing numbness, followed by paralysis spreading from the extremities inward, until the sufferer can no longer control his or her breathing, and dies. In short, lyrical chapters—the book free-associates between memories, while sticking to a rough chronological order—Manguso recounts the harrowing indignities of her treatments, frequent relapses, descents into steroid-induced clinical depression, crucial college sexual experiences had and missed, and trips back and forth between schools, hospitals and her parents' Massachusetts home. What makes this lightning-quick book extraordinary is not just Manguso's deadpan delivery of often unthinkable details, nor her poet's struggle with the damaging metaphors of disease, but the compassion she acquires as she comes to understand her pain in relation to the pain of others: suffering, however much and whatever type, shrinks or swells to fit the shape and size of a life. (June)
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.

Review

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW  EDITORS’ CHOICE
A TIME OUT CHICAGO BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

“Manguso has produced a remarkable, clear-eyed account that turns horror into something humane and beautiful.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Moving . . . a fiercely truthful memoir of illness.”—The Boston Globe

“Here is not a day-by-day description of this grueling time, but an impressionistic text filled with bright, poetic flashes. . . . Many sick people learn to live in the moment, but the power of Manguso’s writing makes that truism revelatory.”—The Washington Post Book World

“Manguso’s slender volume is written in a sparese, no-nonsense style that can be chilling but makes you cheer for the author.”—New York Post

“Manguso writes this account from the far end of the illness, looking back on it from a position of physical strength, biting ferocity, and unsentimental wit.”—Bookforum

“A series of brief, elliptical vignettes composed of sentences as spare as they are unsparing . . . Manguso pushes beyond the familiar confrontation between doctor and patient to explore the linguistic confusion at the heart of the power struggle.”—Slate

“[A] stunning story . . . Manguso’s deadpan tone works equally well in service of the painful and funny moments, or when the two meet.”—Time Out Chicago

 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (May 26, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312428448
• ISBN-13: 978-0312428440
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #407,716 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #88 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Disorders & Diseases > Immune Systems

More About the Author

Sarah Manguso's most recent book is The Guardians: An Elegy (2012). Her memoir, The Two Kinds of Decay (2008), was named an Editors' Choice by the New York Times Sunday Book Review and was short-listed for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize. Her other books include the story collection Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape (2007), included in in McSweeney's One Hundred and Forty-Five Stories in a Small Box, and the poetry collections Siste Viator (2006) and The Captain Lands in Paradise (2002), which was named a Favorite Book of the Year by the Village Voice. Honors for her writing include a Hodder Fellowship and the Rome Prize. A citizen of the United States and Ireland, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Illness Once Removed, June 21, 2008

By 

C. Hutton "book maven" (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Two Kinds of Decay: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Ms. Manguso has written a medically graphic but affecting account of her battle with an auto-immune disease. Written in brief paragraphs with short chapters, the author is clealy recalling a bad dream that she rather not recall. A poet, her writing is lyrical and conversational. Once the reader starts her story, you will not put it down and it is easily read in one sitting. But it is a book that you will come back to.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Journey Through Hell with Humor, July 6, 2008

By 

Michael Chapman (West Coast, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Two Kinds of Decay: A Memoir (Hardcover)

This book is a compelling read. It's a testimony to one woman's resiliance when the terrible thing happens to her, not to some stranger.

Manguso has the courage to revisit her devastating illness, and the wisdom to find the ironies, the lessons, and even the humor in her experience.

Through her sharing of the story of those terrifying sick years, she lets us see the indomitable spirit and the sense of humor that enabled her to survive them and heal.

She juxtaposes pictures of illness against the lyrical beauty of her writing. I find new treasures whenever I reread it.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Triumphant. Beautiful. I've read it 4 times., April 10, 2010

By 

Charli M. Henley "Charli Henley" (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Two Kinds of Decay: A Memoir (Paperback)

This is an unsentimental and unapologetic memoir of illness. The poetry here left me breathless. The disease Manguso describes is a terrible one, but she weathers it gracefully.

The time line is not a linear one - events in the book take place as if they are just foggy memories and not a plotted story - a realistic and satisfying take on the memoir narrative.

Every word is carefully placed, like an IV or a scalpel. Manguso is a surgeon-poet, wasting nothing. Very precise, very beautiful, very painful.

I've read this book twice now. It was recommended to me by a stranger at a party when I revealed my own recent diagnosis of kidney failure and an autoimmune disease. The book makes me feel hopeful - if she could do it, I can do it. It makes me feel courageous. It offers solidarity in the way few others can - without pity, without tears, without fear. And yet, the book makes me cry.

The story of an illness could be trite. Manguso avoids cliche and does not tell us she has learned to be a better person, that she has found God, or even that she is bitter. She tells us simply that illness forces one to live in and for the moment. While she doesn't herald this epiphany as a triumph, I certainly do.