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A review by illustrated_librarian
Body Kintsugi by Senka Marić
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.25
Two months after her husband abandons her, an unnamed narrator finds a lump in her armpit. Facing down the news she's dreaded ever since her mother's breast cancer diagnosis years earlier, she begins down a road that changes the landscape of her body forever. But even a harrowing illness won't crush her drive for life.
This was an intimate, often uncomfortable, yet hopeful account of illness drawn from the author's own experience. The narration is in quick bursts of second-person sentences, making every crushing bit of news or small moment of joy feel visceral and immediate, a testament to the skilfull translation by Celia Hawkesworth. It's tightly focussed on the physical experience of illness; you're thrown right into the centre of a body breaking apart and being put back together.
Throughout her journey the narrator reflects on instances from her childhood where she learned to be ashamed of her sexuality and estranged from her body as a thing completely her own. Again the second person narration makes these moments so impactful: though the experiences themselves may differ, I think many will relate to those small moments that gradually teach shame, teach caution and unpleasant lessons in how women's bodies are perceived and controlled.
For such a slim book it manages to contain nuanced ideas about self-perception, gender, navigating ill health and the passage of time. I found the commentary around the physical body and gender especially well-expressed, yet authentic. The narrator is understandably attached to the parts of herself she's always been told make her a woman, even as she loses them to a series of life-saving operations, but also grows to understand her illness can't steal who she is away. This doesn't require impenetrable academic language to express - she knows herself to be a woman, whole and beautiful, and so she is.
A deeply personal book that manages to resist both sentimentalism and cold hopelessness with its unfussy prose, this is a powerful read I'd definitely recommend.
This was an intimate, often uncomfortable, yet hopeful account of illness drawn from the author's own experience. The narration is in quick bursts of second-person sentences, making every crushing bit of news or small moment of joy feel visceral and immediate, a testament to the skilfull translation by Celia Hawkesworth. It's tightly focussed on the physical experience of illness; you're thrown right into the centre of a body breaking apart and being put back together.
Throughout her journey the narrator reflects on instances from her childhood where she learned to be ashamed of her sexuality and estranged from her body as a thing completely her own. Again the second person narration makes these moments so impactful: though the experiences themselves may differ, I think many will relate to those small moments that gradually teach shame, teach caution and unpleasant lessons in how women's bodies are perceived and controlled.
For such a slim book it manages to contain nuanced ideas about self-perception, gender, navigating ill health and the passage of time. I found the commentary around the physical body and gender especially well-expressed, yet authentic. The narrator is understandably attached to the parts of herself she's always been told make her a woman, even as she loses them to a series of life-saving operations, but also grows to understand her illness can't steal who she is away. This doesn't require impenetrable academic language to express - she knows herself to be a woman, whole and beautiful, and so she is.
A deeply personal book that manages to resist both sentimentalism and cold hopelessness with its unfussy prose, this is a powerful read I'd definitely recommend.