Lucy Grealy

Poet Lucy Grealy survived cancer and wrote a book about it, like other fortunate hundreds before and since. It's what happened to her as a result of her malady and how she deals with it on the page that sets her 1994 account of her illness and its aftermath apart. Grealy is unflinching in recounting her physical disfigurement, which resulted from doctors removing a third of her jaw when she was 9 years old, and she's equally vivid in describing the accompanying psychic wounds. Yet this is not a self-pitying book. Grealy's measured, forceful prose guides the reader through an unimaginable scenario--almost literally, a loss of face--and articulates how she manages to find a way to live in the world with her new appearance and identity. If it was a novel, you'd throw it across the room, but this clear-eyed account is definitely a keeper.

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