"The pain these children brought with their stares engulfed every other pain in my life." p XV

This is a heartbreaking read. Although I've never been physically disfigured in the way Grealy was, I resonated strongly with her thoughts on beauty and acceptance, and her fear of never being loved.

Because the main themes of the book were so serious in nature, I wasn't expecting for this to be nearly so funny as it was. That really helped to balance the book, kept it from being overwhelming.

As for morally objectionable content, there were a few sexual comments, nothing overly descriptive. God's name was used in vain.

The ending seemed abrupt somehow. I really wish there had been some sort of epilogue or afterword, especially since the edition I read was published after Grealy's death at age 39. (According to Wikipedia, she died of a heroin overdose after becoming addicted to her pain medication.)

This is one of those books that stays with you and makes you think. ( )

Linked to Truth and Beauty by Anne Patchett mentioned in “A Month of Sundays”

This was a difficult book to read, but one which I found beautifully written despite the emotional and physical pain suffered by the author throughout her entire story. As a child of nine, she was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, which is a cancer that was treated with radical facial surgery. In order to prevent a recurrence of the life-threatening cancer, she had to undergo two and a half years of chemotherapy. Following that, she endured years and years of mostly disappointing plastic surgery on her jawline. She never felt that her face was sufficiently acceptable in the view of others although she was able to make friends after high school, attend college and direct her career toward writing.

This book made me want to be her friend. She always seemed so lonely and misunderstood because of her appearance. Her greatest solace during her younger years was with her companionship and work with horses. Both of the horses that she once owned met untimely ends. It all seemed so unfair.

In this book, the author mentioned a lot about flap procedures for plastic surgery. As a surgical oncology nurse back in the 1960s and 1970s, I remember patients with those flap procedures. They were horrible. Fortunately the author never had any of those that were proposed to her, but the surgical procedures which she did have (there were so many!) had terrribly disappointing results. It all seems unfair to me that a child had to suffer such a fate and continue to endure hardships as what this author faced year after year. She was a very brave person for telling her own story with such eloquence. ( )

Good moving story of a disfigured girl and how she coped with it. ( )

Lucy Grealy‘s Autobiography of a Face is on most short lists of best memoirs. Grealy became modestly famous from her story at the time it was published.

While I can’t say I didn’t enjoy reading it or sympathize with the girl who suffered so much, it didn’t affect me–reach me or touch me–the way it seems to affect most readers. I slightly pulled back from Grealy at times as I read the book. That’s kind of horrifying for me to think about because what happens to the young Grealy in the story is tragic: Grealy had cancer as a child and lost part of her jaw to the disease, growing up with a disfigured face.

As I try to look through the book to give you an idea of why I felt lukewarm, I can’t find any clues–although it seems to me that the world through her eyes didn’t seem like a world I know or a way that I connect with the world. Skimming the book, I realize I need to read it again. Maybe it was me. I want to be fair. I want to be accurate. I’ll toss it on the pile of unread books!

(When I subsequently read Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty I began to realize why I didn't "properly" respond to Grealy's book!) ( )