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Dec 17, 2009

Jenni rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Sandra rated it:

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...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Mar 12, 2008

Doneen rated it:

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 becaus More...

4 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jul 09, 2009

Jessica rated it:

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 peo More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 23, 2009

Jen rated it:

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 More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jul 02, 2007

sydney rated it:

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 he More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Genevieve rated it:

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

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Stephanie rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

May 23, 2008

Robin rated it:

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 lif More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 27, 2007

Tate rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 19, 2007

Carla rated it:

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...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Sarah rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Kate rated it:

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 <Truth and Beauty: A Friendship> about Grealy after she died. Patchett reveals a lot about Grealy and I wished I could have More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 03, 2009

Juliana rated it:

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 extra More...

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Jan 02, 2009

Katherine rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 06, 2012

Sheila rated it:

I have not yet finished this book. So far, so great. The book is not at all what I expected. I thought there would be a more childlike narrator, and this narrator could not be more wise, more introspective. Autobiography tells the story of a nine year old Irish immigrant girl, Lucy, who discovers she has a malignancy in her jaw. Right now, I am immersed in the beginning of her recovery from surgery to remove the tumor.

As a companion to this book, I also purchased Ann Patchett's Trut More...

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Nov 01, 2011

Aneesa rated it:

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 More...

2 comments like

Jul 23, 2011

Caitlin rated it:

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 compound More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 22, 2011

Elisamatt rated it:

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 mean More...

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May 20, 2011

Cyndy rated it:

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

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Apr 14, 2011

Ciara rated it:

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." More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Mar 11, 2011

Shauna rated it:

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 More...

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Mar 06, 2011

Yadimar rated it:

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 gre More...

1 comment like

Nov 29, 2010

Peter rated it:

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 More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 20, 2010

John rated it:

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, More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 06, 2010

Barb rated it:

I Thought the Publicity Interview With Charlie Rose Was Better Than The Book

My book club chose 'Autobiography of a Face' as a companion read to 'Truth and Beauty'. This came out long before 'Million Little Pieces' and 'Running With Scissors' but I read it for the first time just recently. If those memoirs hadn't been dragged under the microscope my *ah-hem* "nonsense" meter might not have gone off reading this story, I can't say for sure. While I understand that memoir m More...

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May 16, 2010

Susan rated it:

WOW! A beaautifully written but grueling book about a child's journey with cancer that takes away the side of her face leaving a disfigurement that isolates her from her twin sister and other siblings, many of her friends and her mother. She is taunted unmercifully by the boys throughout school Her cancer treatment is excruciating with the pain and discomfort not letting up until the day before the next treatment. Born in the age of the stiff upper lip, she resists crying and feeling sorry fo More...

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Mar 05, 2010

Sarah rated it:

A very complicated book. I'm not sure how to rate it. I will stick to a three right now and might revise upward after more thought. I'm also not sure what I think about it. On the one hand, its a total triumph as an autobiography - we see the world through her particular experiences and outlook and, more than I have ever experienced before, I saw the world through her eye. Literally. I felt that we were in her head, looking out her eyes and seeing what she saw. Certainly this is due to he More...

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Nov 11, 2009

NS - Cami rated it:

Appropriate 9-12th grade and above, and quoted from Publisher's 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 effe More...

1 comment like

Apr 25, 2009

Jennifer rated it:

I just finished reading Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy. I originally got this book because I started out the year reading Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty: A Friendship, which is about Ann's friendship with Lucy. Lucy is a quite a colorful and tragic character in the book and I wanted to know more about her. I was also very curious to see what Lucy looked like because the subject of this book is her face, which was disfigured as a result of childhood cancer.

Her experiences wit More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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