In the tradition of William Styron’s tour de force Darkness Visible, The Body Broken is a gorgeously told and intensely moving ...
read full description
reviews
Dec 18, 2011
Michael
rated it: 
“The Body Broken” by Lynne Greenberg is a memoir of her battle with debilitating pain. She was in a serious car accident in her youth but had appeared to make a complete recovery from her life-threatening injuries. However, 20 years later, after setting up the “perfect” life - house in Brooklyn, married with 2 kids, professor teaching 17th century british literature at a college near their house - she suddenly begins experiencing headaches that effectively shut down her ability to work, parent
More...
Jul 27, 2010
Megan
rated it: 
this memoir of chronic pain (specifically headaches) had a lot of potential. the author, lynne greenberg, is an english professor, and references poetry throughout, often by poets i'm already fond of (louise gluck, adrienne rich); she uses poetry in life to find comfort and courage. also, greenberg gave up on a professional dance career in high school but has continued to find solace in dance, especially ballet, ever since. sounds like someone i should be able to connect to.
but the b More...
but the b More...
0 comments
like
(2 people liked it)
Sep 19, 2009
Emily
rated it:
This is the memoir of a woman who goes from a successful, happy and seemingly perfect life to one of chronic pain that is literally debilitating. Greenburg chronicles her months of bedridden depression and agony with extreme candor. To the point that I wonder if she truly is happy now, she writes so well of the terribleness of it all. (Particularly when talking about the driver of the car who caused the accident that precipitated her pain, she certainly has not forgiven him.) For the most pa
More...
Aug 07, 2009
Kim
rated it: 
Twenty two years after Lynne Greenberg thought she had walked away unscathed from the neck fracture she sustained at age nineteen, her ordeal came roaring back when she learned that her neck was still broken. According to Greenberg, "in the breath of a moment, I could see that my life had fractured in two as clearly as had my fractured neck."
The Body Broken details Greenberg's coming to terms with a serious debilitating condition. She doesn't pull punches as to the de More...
The Body Broken details Greenberg's coming to terms with a serious debilitating condition. She doesn't pull punches as to the de More...
May 18, 2009
Ellen
rated it:
You guys know how I am all about reading books authored by others who have chronic diseases and seeing the different responses different people have to their situations. Since I have lupus, a huge part of my medical treatment is devoted to managing my pain, which basically means coming up with the right combination of drugs; thus, I was intrigued by Lynne Greenberg's memoir, which deals with her daily struggle to manage her extreme unrelenting pain (hers was caused by an auto accident) and to h
More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Mar 26, 2010
Matt
rated it: 
This rather astonishing book is ostensibly an account of the author's struggle to live with severe, intractable, chronic head and neck pain. But it is so very much more than that: a discourse on family and love and literature (she is a Milton scholar)and, ultimately, on life and how to live, in spite of the awful things that can happen to you and shatter your world; it is about how to use the essentials of your human being to, as best you can, put your world back together, even if it is missing
More...
Sep 22, 2009
Kasey
rated it:
It's hard not to compare this book to Alice Eve Cohen's What I Thought I Knew, which I also just finished. Both, at least in part, are about the authors' experiences with doctors and Western medicine, but I found The Body Broken hard to get through, and I ended up skimming just so I could see what happened in the end. Lynne Greenberg's story is sad and compelling, but the way she tells it is so... pedantic and (I'm sorry) boring. She is the sort of writer who doesn't know what to leave out, s
More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Jan 20, 2010
Laren
rated it: 
When the author was nineteen, she broke her neck in a car crash, but miraculously recovered. Then, many years later, the pain in her neck returned with a vengeance. She relates the many different things she tried to make it stop, including a cocktail of drugs, many medical procedures and surgery, utilizing many different specialists along the way to varying degrees of success. However, nothing makes the pain go away completely.
This book does give a small glimpse of how a life in c More...
This book does give a small glimpse of how a life in c More...
May 01, 2009
Regina
rated it:
So far I can't really decide if I like this book or not. The author is an associate professor of 17th century British literature, and each chapter begins with a snippet of poetry. I enjoy the poetry; it's her writing style I'm not sure about. This book challenges me (I keep having to stop and look up unknown words- that doesn't happen often in my normal reads!)
Her journey of chronic pain is also difficult to read. She is so accurate in her descriptions. Anyone who has suffered More...
Her journey of chronic pain is also difficult to read. She is so accurate in her descriptions. Anyone who has suffered More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Jun 29, 2009
Nette
rated it:
The author tries to find a cure for her chronic neck and head pain, aided by her perfect family and friends, snug in her lovely house in her lovely neighborhood, and with the help of about 10,000 different doctors being paid for by her truly awesome insurance. And she whines about every effing thing. For example, she checks into a pain clinic and is horrified because she NEVER gets up before 8:30 and must ALWAYS have a perfectly brewed cup of Starbucks, and yet -- they make her get up early!
More...
2 comments
like
(4 people liked it)
Jun 25, 2010
lola
rated it:
Hey, you! Like when authors front-end their writing with snips of poetry, but HATE how they just let them sit there, gently backgrounding the tone of what you're about to read? Ugh, me too!
That's why I loved Lynne Greenberg's The Body Broken: A Memoir. Greenberg chooses to continuously make direct in-text references to her openers, quoting them again and again, cherry-picking their prose and strapping it against its will into her own narrative. To the point where I was anxious to fi More...
That's why I loved Lynne Greenberg's The Body Broken: A Memoir. Greenberg chooses to continuously make direct in-text references to her openers, quoting them again and again, cherry-picking their prose and strapping it against its will into her own narrative. To the point where I was anxious to fi More...
0 comments
like
(2 people liked it)
Oct 12, 2009
Laine
rated it:
Does it make a difference if one's body is precarious because of a car accident or if one has been afflicted by the vast worlds of viruses, bacteria, and genetic bloopers. I think not, and I welcome this author to the world of physical fragility. She joins a sort of darkish netherworld, a vast unknown sisterhood of those us hanging on, understanding and living with daily grim realities with joyous choice. Her cerebral spin on chronic illness is masterful, worthy of her life as a poetry profe
More...
Jul 25, 2009
Emily
rated it:
This book was very easy reading, and flowed well. It was easy to see that although the topic was chronic pain, and the author's journey. With that said, I nearly stopped reading halfway through, because the writing hit so close to home. And reading about another person's despair and depression, her intractable pain, was just so difficult. But because I was enjoying the writing and hoping for a 'happy ending' I kept on.
The book is a great one for someone to really understand what chr More...
The book is a great one for someone to really understand what chr More...
Oct 03, 2009
Jessie
rated it:
Utterly compelling story of a woman's struggle to come to terms with chronic, disabling pain. Greenberg is a Milton scholar and deftly weaves the 'paradise lost' theme throughout the book. She begins each chapter begins with a poem as epigraph and then then uses that poem to explore a related theme. It's a difficult task to make the interior world of someone in pain an interesting read, but Greenberg manages to pull it off. Highly recommended.
Aug 04, 2009
Kerry
rated it:
I had seen thos book written up in Readers Digest and I like to read memoirs occassionally. I thought it was very interesting. I could identify with her searching for answers and the right doctor(I feel like this is what I do with my son) It also makes me look at my pain in a different light..I cannot even imagine being in constant pain all of the time.
Aug 31, 2009
Diana
rated it:
This book is a memoir by a woman who suffers with incapacitating pain from an old neck fracture--the pain starts suddenly 20 year after the accident. The book is flawed by a common problem with memoirs--it feels as if the author treats her family and friends too kindly, so as not to hurt anyone's feelings, and thus it doesn't feel entirely honest.
Mar 08, 2010
Leeann
rated it:
I am a chronic pain sufferer and read this book to understand and learn about how someone else has coped with this. I enjoy modern poetry and found the frequent references to poetry hard to follow. I learned a lot and felt less lonely. It is a well written and thoughtful book.
Feb 15, 2010
Jessica
rated it:
I had a lot of empathy for the author of this book. She is exceptional at describing the levels or her pain and the emotions associated with it. This memoir really gave me more resolve to overcome my own pain issues. I would recommend this to anyone who is dealing with any kind of pain on a daily basis.
May 13, 2009
Lauren
rated it:
Tragic, compelling memoir of a life lived in chronic pain. The beauty of this book is in its telling: the author isn't just a woman writing about her pain, she's a writer first. It's almost as if there are two main characters in this memoir, the author and her pain. And the poetry interspersed weaves together, sometimes beautifully, sometimes in an almost sinister fashion, the relationship the two have with one another. The only reason why I gave it 4 instead of 5 stars was difficulty follow
More...
May 06, 2009
Lisa
rated it:
I liked the author's story about battling her chronic pain (maybe because of my chronic back pain), but I didn't care for all the references to a zillion peoms thoughout the text. It messed up the flow of the story for me.
Apr 23, 2009
Laura
rated it:
This is wonderful as well. I hated reading it though because I felt like I was reliving my own pain. Regardless, Greenberg perfectly describes the blinding, imprisoning, and depressing sensations of pain. Luckily, Greenberg had the resources to enter an inpatient program at a pain clinic and learn strategies to overcome the pain and depression. A must-read for those and their loves ones who must endure pain daily.
Jun 27, 2009
Jessica
rated it:
I found this book very inspirational. This women has to live with such pain and suffering and yet with the little strength she has left, she finds a way to navigate her way back to a life of normalcy. It also helped me remember that there are people out there who have it a lot worse off than I do when it comes to health problems. I could relate a lot to what she had to say about being ill all the time. After reading this memoir I have felt like I can also try harder to have a better outlook on m
More...
Feb 04, 2012
Dec 20, 2011
Dec 16, 2011
