Rewriting Illness: What People are Saying
I'm overjoyed by the responses from writers, therapists and other storytellers to my memoir, pub date May 23.
"In Rewriting Illness, Elizabeth Benedict isn't just rewriting the narrative she's given when she's diagnosed with cancer--she's gifting us her company, which I couldn't get enough of. With grace, wit, and refreshing candor, she turned her encounter with cancer into an intimate drama, a dark comedy, and a meditation on marriage, motherhood, friendship, secrets, fragility, and love, and in doing so, she asks us to pay attention to everything in our lives that really matters. When I finished the book, I felt like I had made a new friend, and all I wanted was to keep our conversation going. This is more than a memoir; it's an experience."
*** Lori Gottlieb, NYT bestselling author: Maybe You Should Talk To Someone & co-host of the "Dear Therapists" podcast
“Elizabeth Benedict’s book is brave, heartening and beautiful. We avert our eyes from the deep terror that she must face; she faces it and faces it down. This book is a lesson in how to live. Brava.”
*** Roxana Robinson, Sparta, Dawson’s Fall, Georgia O’Keefe: A Life.
“Memoirs of serious illness are often good suspense stories, and this one is a page-turner. I read Elizabeth Benedict's Rewriting Illness in a single sitting and finished it infinitely more knowledgeable about what it means to be diagnosed with cancer. Here is someone who’s figured out not only how to think about the unthinkable but how to turn her into an honest, gripping, and genuinely humorous story. It’s the kind of inspiring book you want to share with all the important people in your life.”
*** Sigrid Nunez, author of What Are You Going Through and The Friend.
“Witty, vivid, harrowing, as though Nora Ephron had written a book called ‘I Feel Bad About My Tumor.’ Especially good on the abrupt, stopped-time feeling when the flow of life—city life, complicated life, sentient life—collides with illness.”
*** Thomas Beller, Author of J.D. Salinger, The Escape Artist and Lost in the Game: A Book about Basketball
“Rewriting Illness is a superbly intelligent and surprisingly entertaining memoir about what happens when a lifelong fear of illness collides at last with illness itself. Elizabeth Benedict … writes with an honesty and a sly sense of humor about herself that make this book hard to put down.”
*** Stephen McCauley, author of My Ex-Life
"I devoured Elizabeth Benedict's beautiful book in one sitting. I’m moved and astonished by how she made her cancer story universal, even for someone who is not yet, knock wood, a member of that club…
*** Betsy West, Documentary director (RBG, JULIA, Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down)
"In Rewriting Illness, Elizabeth Benedict isn't just rewriting the narrative she's given when she's diagnosed with cancer--she's gifting us her company, which I couldn't get enough of. With grace, wit, and refreshing candor, she turned her encounter with cancer into an intimate drama, a dark comedy, and a meditation on marriage, motherhood, friendship, secrets, fragility, and love, and in doing so, she asks us to pay attention to everything in our lives that really matters. When I finished the book, I felt like I had made a new friend, and all I wanted was to keep our conversation going. This is more than a memoir; it's an experience."
*** Lori Gottlieb, NYT bestselling author: Maybe You Should Talk To Someone & co-host of the "Dear Therapists" podcast
“Elizabeth Benedict’s book is brave, heartening and beautiful. We avert our eyes from the deep terror that she must face; she faces it and faces it down. This book is a lesson in how to live. Brava.”
*** Roxana Robinson, Sparta, Dawson’s Fall, Georgia O’Keefe: A Life.
“Memoirs of serious illness are often good suspense stories, and this one is a page-turner. I read Elizabeth Benedict's Rewriting Illness in a single sitting and finished it infinitely more knowledgeable about what it means to be diagnosed with cancer. Here is someone who’s figured out not only how to think about the unthinkable but how to turn her into an honest, gripping, and genuinely humorous story. It’s the kind of inspiring book you want to share with all the important people in your life.”
*** Sigrid Nunez, author of What Are You Going Through and The Friend.
“Witty, vivid, harrowing, as though Nora Ephron had written a book called ‘I Feel Bad About My Tumor.’ Especially good on the abrupt, stopped-time feeling when the flow of life—city life, complicated life, sentient life—collides with illness.”
*** Thomas Beller, Author of J.D. Salinger, The Escape Artist and Lost in the Game: A Book about Basketball
“Rewriting Illness is a superbly intelligent and surprisingly entertaining memoir about what happens when a lifelong fear of illness collides at last with illness itself. Elizabeth Benedict … writes with an honesty and a sly sense of humor about herself that make this book hard to put down.”
*** Stephen McCauley, author of My Ex-Life
"I devoured Elizabeth Benedict's beautiful book in one sitting. I’m moved and astonished by how she made her cancer story universal, even for someone who is not yet, knock wood, a member of that club…
*** Betsy West, Documentary director (RBG, JULIA, Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down)
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