Horizontal Woman: The Story of a Body in Exile

by Suzanne E. Berger

In the mundane act of picking up her child, Suzanne Berger incurs a severe back injury that leaves her suddenly and dramatically disabled. Because the muscles for sitting are torn and using a wheelchair for any length of time is impossible, she finds herself literally horizontal. In this dazzling memoir, Berger charts her course from this almost completely horizontal existence to partial mobility and finally to tentative uprightness and walking. With vigor, insight, and black humor, Berger portrays the phantasmagoric universe caused by her unusual physical placement in the world. She captures the emotional vicissitudes of confinement and chronic pain, seismic changes in personal relationships, mind/body unity and disparity, and greatly modified parenthood in a series of mesmerizing stories about everything from blissful aquatherapy sessions in a rehabilitation hospital to raging tirades addressed to Mr. Rogers from the TV room floor. In the tradition of Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a

Hardcover

First published August 1, 1996

Reviews

[Olivia Dresher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book in one of the little free libraries in the neighborhood last year. I read maybe half of it but couldn't take it anymore. The writing felt self-conscious, and the black humor made me cringe. She is a respected writer, though, but I have no idea what her other books are like.