A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing [Paperback]

Reynolds Price (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 20, 2003

Reynolds Price has long been one of America's most acclaimed and accomplished men of letters. In A Whole New Life he presents his most intimate story yet -- a memoir as compelling as any work of the imagination.

In 1984, a large cancer was discovered in Price's spinal cord. Here, he recounts his battle to withstand and recover from this devastating affliction. He charts the first puzzling symptoms, three surgeries, the radiation that paralyzes his lower body, the occasionally comic trials of rehab, the steady rise of pain and reliance on drugs, and his discovery of biofeedback and hypnosis. Beyond the particulars, Price illuminates larger concerns, such as the gratitude he feels toward family and friends and (some) doctors, the abundant return of his powers as a writer, and the "now appalling, now astonishing grace of God." More than the portrait of one person in crisis, A Whole New Life offers honest insight, realistic encouragement, and authentic inspiration -- and stands as one of Price's crowning achievements.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author of Kate Vaiden records his struggle with a cancerous tumor found in his spinal cord in 1985 and his return to writing.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

While walking with Price across the Duke University campus in the spring of 1984, a colleague noticed Price's awkward gait. That incident marked the beginning of the novelist's four-year "collision with spinal cancer and paralysis." This remarkable memoir recalls the first surgery that failed to stop the tumor (which Price imagined as an "alien and deadly eel"), the radiation treatment that destroyed the nerves in his spine and the use of his legs, the religious vision promising healing, the pain-killing drugs overprescribed by unsympathetic doctors, and the friends and family who rallied around him. Price refused to succumb to self-pity, to ask the pointless tired old question of "Why me?" He writes, "The only answer is of course Why not ?" Now, clear of cancer though not cured, Price has a new life not only as a paraplegic but as a great writer whose creative energies have rebounded. Since his crisis, he has produced 14 books; this work features poems written during that period. Highly recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/94.
- Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (May 20, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743238540
• ISBN-13: 978-0743238540
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #228,830 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Reynolds Price was born in Macon, North Carolina in 1933. Educated at Duke University and, as a Rhodes Scholar, at Merton College, Oxford University, he has taught at Duke since 1958 and is now James B. Duke Professor of English.

His first short stories, and many later ones, are published in his Collected Stories. A Long and Happy Life was published in 1962 and won the William Faulkner Award for a best first novel. Kate Vaiden was published in 1986 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Good Priest's Son in 2005 was his fourteenth novel. Among his thirty-seven volumes are further collections of fiction, poetry, plays, essays, and translations. Price is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and his work has been translated into seventeen languages.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One test of a good book is..., September 25, 2001

By 

Paul D. Baxter (Mebane, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing (Paperback)

One test of a good book is this: does it change the way you live your life or how you look at people. Reynolds Price, professor of English at Duke University, explores in this work a theme that hits everyone but that we don't often consider, or wish to consider, that is, the effect of major trauma on one's life and the life of one's friends, and perhaps everyone else around you.

RP tells the story of his own experience with spinal cancer in a bold, unflinching, but intensely personal way. One of the themes of the work is how profoundly a patient is affected by the attitudes and communication habits of medical care professionals. While he has tremendous praise for those who showed loving concern for him in his difficult times, he also wonders why some were so callous. For instance, he was informed of his tumor by two doctors while lying on a gurney in a crowded hallway. "What would those tow splendidly trained men have lost if they'd waited to play their trump til I was back in the private room for which Blue Cross was paying our mutual employer, Duke [University], a sizable mint in my behalf?"

Also wonderful in this book are his lessons/recommendation for those who have undergone similar tragedies such as this: "Generous people - true practical saints, some of them boring as root canals - are waiting to give you everything on Earth but your main want, which is simply THE PERSON YOU USED TO BE."

For me at least, this book helped change how I look at people, and I hope, will give me strength to deal with the traumas that will undoubtedly come someday to me and those I love.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great message for those with cancer, December 7, 1999

By 

Kathy LaTour (Dallas, Texas, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing (Paperback)

I was sitting at the edge of a lake when I read A Whole New Life. I had finished by own book about the cancer experience and begun traveling to talk about the psychosocial (read emotional) issues of healing from such an experience. And then I read the words "the best thing the radiologist could have said to me was the old Reynolds Price is dead, who do you want to be now." It summarized for me much of my searching for what I had tried to say about what had happend tome. My old life is gone, was over the day they found the lump. I had forged a new one, but wish that someone along the way had told me that the cancer journey means becoming someone different -- and I think better. Thanks Reynolds Price. I recommend your book every time I speak.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How one man surmounts near-fatal cancer and terrible pain, October 18, 1998

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing (Paperback)

If you are interested in how a man copes with the precipitate fall from health to paraplegia and near-death in a horifyingly short time, read this book. If you are interested in how a person copes with agonizing, intractable pain, which a wide variety of medical treatments are unable to affect, read this book -- and learn about how biofeedback, to his surprise, enabled him to continue to endure his pain but ignore it. An inspiring book that shows what an extraordinary human spirit is capable of enduring and overcoming, if it must.