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Autobiography of a Face

3.9 of 5 stars 3.90 · rating details · 9,501 ratings · 823 reviews

From Publisher:
"I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I've spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison."

At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diag...more From Publisher:
"I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I've spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison."

At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a potentially terminal cancer. When she returned to school with a third of her jaw removed, she faced the cruel taunts of classmates. In this strikingly candid memoir, Grealy tells her story of great suffering and remarkable strength without sentimentality and with considerable wit. Vividly portraying the pain of peer rejection and the guilty pleasures of wanting to be special, Grealy captures with unique insight what it is like as a child and young adult to be torn between two warring impulses: to feel that more than anything else we want to be loved for who we are, while wishing desperately and secretly to be perfect.

From Publishers Weekly

Diagnosed at age nine with Ewing's sarcoma, a cancer that severely disfigured her face, Grealy lost half her jaw, recovered after two and half years of chemotherapy and radiation, then underwent plastic surgery over the next 20 years to reconstruct her jaw. This harrowing, lyrical autobiographical memoir, which grew out of an award-winning article published in Harper's in 1993, is a striking meditation on the distorting effects of our culture's preoccupation with physical beauty. Extremely self-conscious and shy, Grealy endured insults and ostracism as a teenager in Spring Valley, N.Y. At Sarah Lawrence College in the mid-1980s, she discovered poetry as a vehicle for her pent-up emotions. During graduate school at the University of Iowa, she had a series of unsatisfying sexual affairs, hoping to prove she was lovable. No longer eligible for medical coverage, she moved to London to take advantage of Britain's socialized medicine, and underwent a 13-hour operation in Scotland. Grealy now lives in New York City. Her discovery that true beauty lies within makes this a wise and healing book.(less)

Paperback, 256 pages

Published March 18th 2003 by Harper Perennial (first published September 1st 1994)

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Best Memoir / Biography / Autobiography

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Jul 13, 2012 jo rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: cate, and anyone interested in childhood trauma

Shelves: trauma, the-body, memoir, psychic-pain

this book knocked me for six (this, i'm told, is a cricket-based metaphor. the only other cricket-related sentence i know is "the sound of willow on leather," which english expats like simon use with a quiver in their voices. this has absolutely nothing to do with this review). lucy grealy writes about her experience with a severely crippling childhood cancer which, besides putting her through years of chemo and radiation therapy with accompanying nausea, pain, terror, ill-being, baldness, and m...more this book knocked me for six (this, i'm told, is a cricket-based metaphor. the only other cricket-related sentence i know is "the sound of willow on leather," which english expats like simon use with a quiver in their voices. this has absolutely nothing to do with this review). lucy grealy writes about her experience with a severely crippling childhood cancer which, besides putting her through years of chemo and radiation therapy with accompanying nausea, pain, terror, ill-being, baldness, and missed classes, also ended up the chopping off of a good chunk of her face. she was 9. it is not clear to me how happy her childhood had been till then. maybe it's not clear to her, either. but it is abundantly clear that the narrator of this memoir had an excruciatingly painful life at least starting at the age of nine till when she died of a drug overdose at 39 (while i don't doubt that she had moments of relief and even happiness, very few of these moments make their appearance in this memoir, and when they do they are a set up for further, more devastating falls).

the genius of this book is not the cancer narrative per se, but the narrative of a childhood trauma so powerful that it empties a soul from inside out and cuts away those tenuous, undefinable, yet essential resources that allow one to navigate life and find solace and comfort in the company of others and especially oneself. grealy's deepest disability is emotional.

since lucy grealy has a fabulous way with words and with feelings and sees really deep inside her pain, she depicts her cancer in the context of a family life marred by great emotional abstinence and isolation. adults are not good to lucy. the doctor who gives her her weekly injections of chemotherapy is always on the phone (yes, he gives her chemo while talking on the phone to someone else) and relates to her as if she were an orange instead of a child. they don't even exchange a word. for three years.

mom and dad, though obviously devoted to their children (if i remember correctly there are six of them, and lucy is a twin), fail to connect with lucy's pain either because they cannot deal with their own pain or because they are too ashamed and embarrassed (i.e. cannot deal with their own pain). by willing lucy's pain away and castigating her (gently but firmly) for complaining when she suffers, lucy's mother puts little lucy in a space in which pain is shameful and a sign of weakness. the adult author knows all too well that denying pain its devastation proliferates it and makes it fester, yet she can only look at the damage that was done and report on it. there is no transcendence in grealy's life.

a lot is made of peers' teasing (i can't imagine such horrible and relentless teasing happening when/where i was a child; ostracizing, gawking, and isolating, sure, but teasing like that? i don't think so. did i grow up in fairyland?), while hardly any mention is made of siblings. where are lucy's siblings, where is her twin while she walks to school among jeerings and attacks?

controversy arose when ann patchett published a memoir of her friendship with grealy. apparently patchett wasn't very kind to grealy's family. suellen grealy, lucy's older sister, felt moved to put out an angry article in defense of her family, her mother in particular. my review of this book has nothing to do with the reality of grealy's family, her siblings, her parents. it has to do only with the story the narrator of Autobiography of a Face tells us. she chooses to leave out her siblings and to depict her parents as emotionally unavailable. this has nothing to do with the reality of these things. nothing. anyone who misses this distinction does the grealy family the injustice suellen laments in her article.

having said this, i also want to say that, within the story, the traumatic impact of lucy's cancer is exponentially magnified by the bad emotional handling she gets from parents and doctors. in this sense, this is a tremendous testimony to the power of context in the genesis of devastating trauma.(less)

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Aug 11, 2007 Jenni rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

Autobiography of a Face chronicles Lucy Grealy's battle with the physical and psychological effects of Ewing's sarcoma, a cancer that robbed her of much of her jaw. Grealy touches upon some of the more negative aspects of her ordeal, such as her need for attention and her tendency to blame all of her problems on her face, yet it is clear some of the tale is left untold. The writing itself is wonderful: flowing, elegant sentences filled with succinct vocabulary.

Grealy and author Ann Patchett (Be...more

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Sep 02, 2007 Sandra rated it 4 of 5 stars

I am interested in writing memoir or at least creative non-fiction so I was excited to read this book. Certainly autobiography is self-centered by nature and one should not be surprised to find the subject's conciousness to take center stage. Grealy somehow manages to almost completely immerse us in her thoughts and feelings for the eighteen years between her diagnosis with Ewing's sarcoma and the writing of the book. Her honesty is unflinching and totally politically incorrect at times. There a...more

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Mar 12, 2008 Doneen rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm so glad I read this book after reading Ann Patchett's "Truth and Beauty," which was her take on the friendship between the 2 women. I came away from reading the first book with a very skewed idea of what the relationship was like. I didn't like Lucy Grealy at all--she came across as a total self-involved neurotic who totally wasted her life and died of an accidental heroin overdose. After reading Lucy's own account of her childhood cancer and all the hardships she endured because of her trea...more

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Jul 09, 2009 Jessica rated it 1 of 5 stars

Ehm...at the risk of sounding completely cold, I did not like this book. I spent most of the book so consumed by frustration for Lucy's mother and Lucy's own perceptions that I couldn't allow myself to feel anything else for her.

Yes, she was a cancer survivor, and she was treated horribly by her peers growing up. But sometime after the large portion of her jaw was removed, she admits that she didn't even understand that she had had cancer until many years later! She thought that people stared a...more Ehm...at the risk of sounding completely cold, I did not like this book. I spent most of the book so consumed by frustration for Lucy's mother and Lucy's own perceptions that I couldn't allow myself to feel anything else for her.

Yes, she was a cancer survivor, and she was treated horribly by her peers growing up. But sometime after the large portion of her jaw was removed, she admits that she didn't even understand that she had had cancer until many years later! She thought that people stared at her because she had lost her hair due to chemotherapy, not because of the shape of her face. She spent so much time deluding herself into believing a warped reality that she lost out on a good portion of her life. She came off as horribly selfish when detailing her many hospital stays and her initial reaction upon finding out her father had been hospitalized (her chances of getting a pony diminished significantly at that time). She obsessed about being loved, but did not make a very strong case for her being an ideal recipient of love.

The mother was frustrating solely for her inability to "mother". Your daughter is sitting in front of you having poison pumped directly into her body, and you chastise her for crying? Then you remark on how disappointed you are at the fact that she's "letting the treatment bring you down"? Seriously, if there was ever a child who could have used a pat on the head and a comforting, "There, there", it was Lucy.

She tended to dwell on things, and that lead to unnecessarily long and detailed sections that could have been left out. If you ever wanted to know which flavor of pudding to consume for a more pleasingly aesthetic vomit, this book will tell you. It will also tell you how to induce pneumonia by inhaling your vomit. Yes...lots of vomit talk, which goes back to my original point - it really could have been left out.

The last thing I want to say is that I'm not so callous as to not feel sympathy for the things that Lucy had to deal with in her life. It couldn't have been easy. But, here's the thing. The back jacket should not have promised a novel that told her story "without sentimentality", because that's not the same book that I cracked open. If those passages on love, acceptance and her place in the world weren't an example of wallowing in the sentimental, I don't know what is.(less)

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Mary Lucy was only a child when half of her face was removed. She never had a chance to discover who she really was. In many respects, she never grew up. I...more
Apr 03, 2012 04:42am

Jessica Hi Mary. I'm very sorry for what your brother and family have gone through, but this was just a review on the book, not a dissertation on cancer itsel...more
updated Jun 22, 2012 01:55pm

Jan 23, 2009 Jen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoirs-read

Wow! A truly touching story filled with so many little life lessons. A story that makes me cringe a little with guilt when I realize how good I have it yet how often I sometimes take my life for granted, my health for granted, my friends and family for granted... Ms. Grealy opened my eyes up to another world where she had every right to let life beat her down yet she continued to find strength and confidence and continued to somehow pull herself back up, hold her head high and continue to face t...more

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Jul 02, 2007 sydney rated it 5 of 5 stars

Grealy's memoir describes her battle with bone cancer in adolescence, the removal of half her jaw, her two-and-a-half years of radiation/chemo treatments, the string of surgeries to "fix" her face that lasted into her adulthood as each successive reconstruction was absorbed back into her body, and her attempts to be a model patient and keep her family happy by never showing emotion during the ordeal. It's a beautiful, well-written book exploring a young girl's struggle to reconcile her "ugly" ap...more

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May 24, 2008 Genevieve rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jul 24, 2007 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars

TIP: To be read AFTER Ann Patchett’s Truth and Beauty. This autobiography is very engaging and well written. The author tells of her experience with cancer, but she states that while she spent only a certain amount of her youth being treated for cancer, she spent the rest of her life being treated for looking different than everyone else. This is an exploration into a very interesting and intense individual far more than it is a documentary about the affects of cancer. It is rich in language and...more

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May 23, 2008 Robin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, book-club

Since you asked, Caroline... I really appreciated Grealy's ability to get in the mindset of a child, especially one dealing with such trauma. She presented a thoughtful perspective on the medical establishment, and I loved her description of her relationship with visitors as an oft-hospitalized patient. I did think it was disingenuous of her to expect her readers to judge her book by its form and not content, as alluded to in Ann Patchett's afterword (after all, if you're going to put your life...more

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Sep 27, 2007 Tate Cicala rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this often heartbreaking book. Not only did Lucy have to struggle with cancer and years of chemotherapy and hospitals...she endured a lifetime of cruelty and shame over her appearance. She has a running theme of how we are always "waiting for our lives to begin..." We do things like...when I get married I will be happy...when I have a baby...mine is always, when I lose weight I will be happy. Ugh, how trivial and ridiculous! We are the same on the inside whether we are thin, fat...more

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Sep 19, 2007 Carla rated it 5 of 5 stars

an extremely sad but interesting memoir. having read truth and beauty by ann pratchett, a memoir about the friendship between these two authors, i was able to see the other side of the relationship. its nice when you can see the whole picture instead of just one person's experience. although lucy didn't get into the friendship as much since it was her memoir about her life up to a certain point, it did give me insight into her illness and its effect on her personality and emotional problems. if...more

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May 05, 2007 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book says a lot about how our society reacts to "ugliness." It is about a woman who had cancer as a young girl. She beat it, but was left without a jaw on one side of her face.

She says, "I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I've spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed mi...more

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Jul 23, 2007 Kate Garroway rated it 4 of 5 stars

A beautifully written memoir about the late Grealy's struggle with childhood cancer leading to many, many reconstructive surgeries over 20 years. She tells her story with wit and perspective which seems improbable given what she went through. The treatments sound pretty primative now.

I recommend resisting the urge to follow this up with Ann Patchett's about Grealy after she died. Patchett reveals a lot about Grealy and I wished I could have un-read these details and returned to the stronger, sw...more

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Feb 03, 2009 Juliana rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: auto-bio-memoir

Moving, engaging, darkly troubling, and inspiring - made me want to appreciate the simple joys of life [3.5 stars:]

This was a good book, moving and engaging. Though you would think that it was the battle with cancer itself which would prove troublesome, perhaps because of the young age at which she underwent this struggle, we see that it the resulting effects are what truly impacted Grealy's life.

Her book is insightful even for those who have not had to undergo the extraordinary struggles that...more

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Jan 02, 2009 Katherine rated it 5 of 5 stars

Lucy Grealy never thought that she was handicapped as she went through the traumatic and countless surgeries that claimed nearly a third of her jaw due to Ewing sarcoma. It wasn’t until she had to return to school and saw the furtive stares and caught the quick glances from teachers, parents, and students that she realized she was different. As time went by, Lucy’s identity became directly tied into her appearance.
In her memoir, Autobiography of a Face, Grealy traces the history of her illness...more

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Jan 28, 2013 Colleen O'Neill Conlan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: bio-memoir

I wanted to like this book more than I did. Certainly the author's experience was harrowing. She spent much of her childhood and young adulthood in and out of the hospital: first surgery for a rare cancer that resulted in a chunk of her jawbone being removed, then years of chemo and radiation, then years of operations in (often futile) attempts to rebuild her face. Her story is compelling, and sometimes very hard to read. I had such sympathy for this little girl having to go through such a thing...more

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Nov 11, 2012 Alexis rated it 3 of 5 stars

Lucy Grealy’s memoir AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FACE was met with wide critical and popular acclaim when published. The book is overrated in my opinion, and it provides a good test case for Vivian Gornick’s concepts of the “situation” and the “story.” “Every work of literature has both a situation and a story,” Gornick writes in her book THE SITUATION AND THE STORY. “The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the i...more Lucy Grealy’s memoir AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FACE was met with wide critical and popular acclaim when published. The book is overrated in my opinion, and it provides a good test case for Vivian Gornick’s concepts of the “situation” and the “story.” “Every work of literature has both a situation and a story,” Gornick writes in her book THE SITUATION AND THE STORY. “The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say” (13). Grealy’s situation is compelling: as a young girl, she is diagnosed with the rare and formidable Ewing's Sarcoma and has an operation to remove the malignant tumor from her face. Her prognosis is dismal, and she is left with a disfigurement that makes her “ugly.” This sense of her own ugliness looms over her, and thus the story is about her unsurprising search for beauty and truth. Or, so she says.

Grealy’s search for truth falls short for me, in part because I suspect that she was conflicted about her own truth at the time of the book's writing, but her search for beauty is a strong, well-developed theme. Her musings on beauty and ugliness, in fact, as well as her excellent descriptions of the alien hospital world, were what made me stick with this book when I wanted to put it down. What was missing for me on the whole was complex story development; her situation is dramatic, while the story lacks shape and texture—in many places. I suggest that this flatness has to do with the book’s early avoidance of the shadow side of her experience during the time of her diagnosis and early treatment. She doesn't engage with her own doubt. Here’s an example of this flatness from a passage set during her initial hospital stay:

"This sense of comfort continued in the following days and weeks. There were definite problems to face here, but to me they seemed entirely manageable: lie still when you’re told, be brave. It didn’t seem like so much to ask, really, considering what I got in return: attention, absence from school, occasional presents, and,though I wouldn’t have articulated it, freedom from the tensions at home...Some of the other visiting parents, the ones who came in every day, felt sorry for my lack of visitors and sneaked me contraband food items. I played up to this expertly whenever I sensed a particularly orphan-sensitive audience. My mother would have been appalled if she’d known" (38).

The problem I had with this scene and others like it is they struck me as disingenuous. She never develops these “tensions at home” any further, but since she continues to refer to fraught family relationships, we have to take her on her word. If part of her identity was that of emotional orphan or orphan of illness, she doesn’t illustrate the “becoming” of that identity. In fact, mom and dad seem pleasant, caring, and supportive, albeit fuzzy, as characters. If there are tensions at home, show the reader. I don’t doubt that parents could do their best, and a child could still feel differently, could feel lost and alien. But Grealy doesn’t take us through the formation of this important alienation that underpins the story.

The flatness in the beginning is, I think, a problem of persona. Her early persona is one of a young girl trying to keep her chin up, to appear strong, and to avoid whining. While a perfectly believable pose for a child to adopt, a pose to spare her parents and to spare her shame, what she doesn’t write about is the underside of these exhausting heroics and overtures. We don’t get inside of how it felt to be her, struggling for strength in a time of what must have been unimaginable fear. In fact, her protestations against whininess come off as, well, whiny. The reader can be told that this conflict is heartbreaking, but we don’t feel it. She doesn’t let us deep inside the conflict—at least not initially. So for the first 50 or so pages, we are met with a somewhat unreliable narrator, one whom we suspect is holding back. When she does begin to share her conflicted interiority, it feels too late in the story.

Another problem I had was Grealy's reliance on summary. There were plenty of interesting scenes, but we were held back from them frequently, or we were told what they meant or stood for. Grealy’s problems may well have to do with narrative distance and persona. The story is either too close or too far, and in both cases the effect is loss of clarity. One technical issue that contributed to this distance was her overuse of the conditional tense: “I would,” “We would", “they would.” This approach veers too easily toward summary, and the effect is one of drifting through generic time—what life was like generally. Grealy writes some scenes in simple past, too, but the conditional is overused in order to avoid climbing inside of discrete, crystalline moments. Perhaps it was too painful for the writer to do, but this approach distanced me from story.

On the whole, I am glad I read the book. It did get better as she went; the insights became more felt, the persona more honest as she grappled with the mess inside. Grealy was at her best when grasping the minutiae of daily hospital life; here she seemed expert not only of a hidden world, but expert of herself, clear about her own responses to her peculiar alien existence. In these sections of the book, I felt the truth of what Gornick said about how clarity of persona energizes the story. Ultimately, I hope my criticisms of Grealy will help me puzzle out my own problems as a writer--narrative distance, time and tense, and compensating for story with capital-V voice.
(less)

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Jul 26, 2012 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

“I didn’t understand. Was it possible I’d looked this way for a while and was only just noticing it? A profound sense of shame consumed me.”

In Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy narrates her life, beginning at age 9, when a classmate collided with her during a dodge ball game. She subsequently had to have half of her jaw removed and then was found to have cancer. She tells of her struggles with her family and with her illness. Grealy focuses throughout her memoir on her illness, and the confus...more

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Mar 24, 2012 Allison W. rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: YA & Up

Recommended to Allison W. by: SJR (by accident)

I found this book hard to put down from the moment I picked it up. And, while it has been classified as being about physical disfigurement and Ewing's sarcoma, I truly feel that there is are larger underlying themes at work beneath Ms. Grealy's story.

It is a story about the effects of the sudden disruption in the life of a child and the long term effects that can pose for them when they are suddenly ostracized and have to cope with that - especially during the formidable period of life that is p...more

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Feb 18, 2012 ALPHAreader rated it 5 of 5 stars

A friend of mine recently asked me for a reading recommendation, something outside of their usual crime/fantasy/romance genre. The first book that came to mind was Lucy Grealy’s ‘Autobiography of a Face’. It is a biography/memoir, and one of the most powerful books I have ever read. I was so insistent in my recommendation to this friend that I decided to go back and re-read the book myself. And it’s just as moving and horrifyingly powerful as I remembered.

‘Autobiography of a Face’ was first pub...more

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Nov 01, 2011 Aneesa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this book in two sittings. It has everything I want in a memoir or a novel: crazy but true kid logic, internal investigation and dissection.

My only complaint is that while I understand that her brother's schizophrenia is another story, I felt the book was missing information about how she felt about her twin--given that so much of it was about how the author looked.

Some of my favorite moments which I want to remember:

"I had the capacity of imagination to momentarily escape my own pain,...more I read this book in two sittings. It has everything I want in a memoir or a novel: crazy but true kid logic, internal investigation and dissection.

My only complaint is that while I understand that her brother's schizophrenia is another story, I felt the book was missing information about how she felt about her twin--given that so much of it was about how the author looked.

Some of my favorite moments which I want to remember:

"I had the capacity of imagination to momentarily escape my own pain, and I had the elegance of imagination to teach myself something true regarding the world around me, but I didn't yet have the clarity of imagination to grant myself the complicated and necessary right to suffer" (126).

"I felt as if my illness were a blanket the world had thrown over me; all that could be seen from the outside was an indistinguishable lump. And somehow I had transformed that blanket into a tent, beneath which I almost happily set up camp" (130).

"When I tried to imagine being beautiful, I could only imagine living without the perpetual fear of being alone, without the great burden of isolation, which is what feeling ugly felt like" (177).

"Later, as a teenager, I worked in a library, and one day as I was reshelving books I found myself in the medical section, where a book on pediatric oncology caught my eye. Pulling the heavy thing out, I laid it on the table, opened to the index, and looked up my cancer, Ewing's sarcoma. I turned to the given page and read a brief description of the various manifestations of it, followed by a table of mortality rates. A reasonable change for survival was given at five percent.

"The paper of the book was heavy and almost cream-colored, and I ran my finger along the letters, which were so black I half expected to feel them raised up on the page. I looked up. The room was empty and buzzing with both bad light and the numerous stacks of books I still had to shelve. Five percent. I felt obliged to say something, but no one was there, and I didn't know what I was supposed to say anyway. Placing my hand on my neck, feeling the pulse there, I stood for some minutes on the verge of moving or speaking or sitting or something. Then the impulse passed, and I was on the other side of it, feeling as if I'd forgotten something, some name or object or emotion I'd meant to take note of but had carelessly allowed to slip by. Finally someone walked into the room, breaking the silence with the squeak of winter boots, and I turned, reaching for another book the shelve"(67-68).(less)

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Jul 23, 2011 Caitlin Constantine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Several months ago, the mug shot of a criminal suspect landed in my work inbox. When I opened the email, I was so shocked that I gasped out loud, then giggled nervously as I quickly closed it. The young man was horribly disfigured, to the point that his face looked like the creation of a special effects artist in a horror movie. I saw his face in my mind for days afterward, sometimes seeing it in odd shadows in half-light rooms, and each time I was revolted. My very visceral horror was compounde...more Several months ago, the mug shot of a criminal suspect landed in my work inbox. When I opened the email, I was so shocked that I gasped out loud, then giggled nervously as I quickly closed it. The young man was horribly disfigured, to the point that his face looked like the creation of a special effects artist in a horror movie. I saw his face in my mind for days afterward, sometimes seeing it in odd shadows in half-light rooms, and each time I was revolted. My very visceral horror was compounded by my shame at seeing myself laid bare as a superficial, shallow person, then furthermore at my deep sadness when I tried to imagine what that kid's life had been like, how alienated he must have felt from the rest of the world, how much cruelty he'd seen, or maybe how much pity. Imagine dealing with the transient sociopathy of early adolescence that way. I know I had my share of shit flung in my direction, and the only thing "wrong" with me was that I was exceptionally tall and had glasses.

Reading this book gave me a glimpse of what I had tried to imagine, about how it would feel to know that the one thing about yourself that you could not hide is something that inspires people to treat you as if everything about you was wrong and defective and unworthy of love. Good lord, it broke my heart to read this book. Yet it was so good and so essential and so beautiful. Grealy's background as a poet who studied at Iowa shone through every page. No superfluous words, no excessive sentences, every image and every observation flawlessly rendered. Several times I put down the book to luxuriate in a perfectly-turned phrase or to consider a particular idea. The book is slim, about 220 pages, but the content within is substantial.

I'd heard a bit about her relationship with Ann Patchett before reading this, and also about her fatal drug overdose, and I'd worried that this knowledge would color my experience of the book, you know, the way knowing about David Foster Wallace's suicide leaves many of his readers combing his essays and fictions for clues. That external knowledge surfaced from time to time, but for the most part, the book was so beautifully written that it was easy to immerse myself in Grealy's world as I read. (less)

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May 22, 2011 Elisamatt rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: autobiography-memoir

I heard of this book easily 15 years ago, but avoided reading it because I thought it would be simultaneously tragic and over-done. What a surprise! Ms. Grealy was articulate and profound in her description of her struggles with numerous facial and jaw operations. She was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma when she was in the fourth grade. Ewing's Sarcoma is a rare cancer of the bone that at that time had a 5% survival rate--it may have improved slightly by now. She got it in her jaw which meant rem...more

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May 20, 2011 Cyndy Aleo rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, favorites

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I read Autobiography of a Face out of order. Originally published in 1993, I read Lucy Grealy's memoir only after reading her friend Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty: A Friendship. I read Autobiography of a Face knowing that in the end, Lucy's face, and not Lucy triumphed, and I read Autobiography of a Face knowing that Lucy Grealy was dead.

::: About the Book :::

Autobiography of a Face begins with Lucy as a teenager, flashes back to her childhood, and then continues the story when she is an adult...more I read Autobiography of a Face out of order. Originally published in 1993, I read Lucy Grealy's memoir only after reading her friend Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty: A Friendship. I read Autobiography of a Face knowing that in the end, Lucy's face, and not Lucy triumphed, and I read Autobiography of a Face knowing that Lucy Grealy was dead.

::: About the Book :::

Autobiography of a Face begins with Lucy as a teenager, flashes back to her childhood, and then continues the story when she is an adult. In this way, Grealy makes the childhood cancer that ravaged her face incidental to the whole story: that of living with a face that others stare at, and her quest to finally have a "normal" face so that she could finally reach her goal of beginning her life.

Grealy's book recounts the pain of looking different, in school, at jobs, and around other children. As the book progresses, you can see the damage to her psyche being done as she went through her formative years, the age when children are most vulnerable, being teased. You see the development of her desire to hide, and to pretend that what people think doesn't bother her.

She does devote some time to her bout with cancer as a child, but couches it in terms of how it made her different, special, and relates it later to showing hospitals as a safe place, a place where her face didn't set her apart, where she was truly herself.

Grealy's belief that her face was the essence of her, that it developed her sense of truth and beauty (where the title of Patchett's book came from) are prevalent throughout the book. She conveys how central this was to her life in a way that can't be trivialized; when you are done reading, you realize that even the death of her father wasn't as central a point to the book as learning to live with her ever-changing face.

::: The Writing :::

I originally purchased Autobiography of a Face because I wanted the "complete" story after reading Truth and Beauty. Instead, I was blown away with the power of Grealy's writing. An afterword by Patchett talks a bit about Lucy Grealy's life after Autobiography was released, but having read the books out of order, I already knew that Grealy's issues with her face were more than just cosmetic; she had trouble eating. She wasn't even able to wear a denture to replace the teeth that she lost as a result of her cancer.

Patchett says in the Afterword that if Grealy had elaborated even more on her life that people would be crushed with the pain of it, and I think that she is right. But in sifting through all the pain of her life and centering on her face and how it shaped her entire life, she does discover truth, and beauty, and leaves her readers aching not only for her, but for the talent lost in her death.

This review originally published on Epinions: http://www.epinions.com/review/Autobi...(less)

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Apr 14, 2011 Ciara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: autobio-memoir, read-in-2011

possibly i made a big mistake by reading this & then immediately reading truth & beauty by ann pratchett (as well as some of suellen grealy's choice comments about how ann pratchett never should have written truth & beauty). my immediate thoughts on this book were something along the lines of, "not bad. she really touches a nerve about the power & perception of beauty in women. she seems to have some demons, but has to be incredibly strong to go through everything she has gone th...more possibly i made a big mistake by reading this & then immediately reading truth & beauty by ann pratchett (as well as some of suellen grealy's choice comments about how ann pratchett never should have written truth & beauty). my immediate thoughts on this book were something along the lines of, "not bad. she really touches a nerve about the power & perception of beauty in women. she seems to have some demons, but has to be incredibly strong to go through everything she has gone through." (the book is a memoir about grealy's relationship with her face stemming from a diagnosis of earwig's sarcoma when she was nine years old. to treat the tumor, doctors had to remove a significant portion of her jawbone, & she proceeded to undergo almost forty surgeries to reconstruct her face over the next 25 to 30 years, none of which was successful. she spent years in hospitals, eventually becoming addicted to painkillers & street narcotics--though this aspect of the story is only hinted at in . as she enters adolescence, she is teased mercilessly by the other kids at school--mostly boys--& learns to think of herself as ugly & unlovable. she spends most of her life waiting for the surgery that will restore her face so that she can suddenly begin her life, but that surgery never happens. grealy died of a drug overdose in her 30s, six years after this book was published.)

in the afterword, pratchett suggests that the reader peruse this book at least a couple of times to inure herself against the drama of grealy's story, & to fully digest her power as a writer. i did not do that. i infrequently reread books. too many books, too little time. grealy is certainly a capable writer. at no point was i jerked out of the narrative by a clunky phrase or strange word choice. she is also a poetic writer (she considered herself a poet first & a memoirist not at all). which is probably my problem. i'm not big on atmosphere. this book has a lot of atmosphere, for lack of a better word. much as grealy waited for her face in order to start her life, i waited for a coherent narrative before i invested in this book, but it never really gelled. this is purely a matter of personal taste. i prefer writing that is a little bit more concrete than grealy's writing. & because truth & beauty gave me some perspective on how much of grealy's story was edited & shaped & pruned to portray a self-reflection that grealy preferred...well, all writers who write about themselves do this (or should), but something about grealy's choices rubbed me the wrong way. there was a self-conscious kind of self-mythologizing that grated a little.

but this is definitely one of those books that i think people should read & then decide about for themselves. i certainly don't think anyone would regret reading this book.(less)

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Mar 11, 2011 Shauna rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir-biography

A detaild look at how the lack of beauty changes lives. FAVORITE QUOTES: I am filled with questions I rarely allow myself, such as, how do we go about turning into the people we are meant to be?

When I tried to imaging being beautiful, I could only imagine living without the perpetual fear of being alone, without the great burden of isolation, which is what feeling ugly felt like.

I recognized this wonder and awe as intimately connected to the feelings I’d discovered while recovering from chemothe...more

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Mar 06, 2011 Yadimar rated it 4 of 5 stars

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a great, breath-taking, true story. It was a little hard for me to get into at first because I usually read books that I can relate to on a personal level. However, after hearing recommendations from my teacher and the story behind it, I decided to give it a shot. Grealy was extremely honest in the way she told her story. She talks about her experiences with being different and suffering from that. She had cancer at a young age which ate away a great pa...more

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Nov 29, 2010 Peter rated it 4 of 5 stars

It would be pretty hard to find real fault with a book this gorgeous and unflinching. In her afterward, Ann Patchett recommends reading it a second time "just for the sentences." And this is perhaps what ultimately lifts it above other memoirs on similar subjects. It's not just a horror story, or a story about determination and the human spirit. It is a book that turns the unthinkable into lucid startling prose.

Physical pain can be a hard subject to write about, but Grealy re-defines it again an...more

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Nov 20, 2010 John Sundman rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: People interested in the deepest questions of what it means to be human.

Recommended to John by: Lucy Grealy (I read the magazine article on which the book is based).

I've wanted to read this book since reading the magazine article that precipitated it in 1994. Even if the book had sucked I probably would have given it three stars for the title alone. "Autobiography of a Face". It gives me gooseflesh.

Now that I've finally read it, I can report that book lives up to its title. Five stars.

William Carlos Williams concluded his introduction to Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" saying something like, "Ladies and gentlemen, lift your petticoats. You're about to walk t...more

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About Lucy Grealy

Lucinda Margaret Grealy was a poet and memoirist who wrote Autobiography of a Face in 1994. This critically acclaimed book describes her childhood and early adolescence experience with cancer of the jaw, which left her with some facial disfigurement. In a 1994 interview with Charlie Rose conducted right before she rose to the height of her fame, Lucy states that she considers her book to be primar...more

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“Sometimes the briefest moments capture us, force us to take them in, and demand that we live the rest of our lives in reference to them.” — 22 people liked it

“The general plot of life is sometimes shaped by the different ways genuine intelligence combines with equally genuine ignorance.” — 10 people liked it

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