Autobiography of a Face

Lucy Grealy’s book Autobiography of a Face tells the tale of an average little girl going through the trauma of a discovered cancerous tumor and all her subsequent surgeries. As readers, we are placed directly in the middle of the storm as Lucy, a girl living in New York with her dysfunctional family. From her view we see how her father and mother interact in a unique way that shapes Lucy just as much as the distress that treatment causes. Reading this book was especially interesting because Lucy’s profound imagery really helps the reader relate to everything, from distress to family dynamics and self image. This novel had a profound emotional impact on me, at times it was if the ink on the page was reflecting people and events tied up in my own life.
I remember reading about Lucy going through the first chemo injections, and how she described feeling her organs fighting the poison she was given: “My body, wanting to turn itself inside out, made wave after wave of attempts to rid itself of this unseeable intruder, this overwhelming and noxious poison ” (76). I was immediately filled with sympathy for this helpless child, but also concern for my own family. My mother was surprised with a tumor in her colon just a few months ago, and is now in chemotherapy. Is this what she was feeling, this immense pain and helplessness? I wondered if she weeped as this poor child did, despite coming home looking a little tired at most. Lucy’s story is especially sobering for families touched by cancer, which unfortunately is many of us.
I think that Lucy’s struggle with beauty and how she perceived herself is especially powerful for teenagers to hear about. It is during this time period that according to dosomething.org 7 out of 10 girls “believe that they are not good enough or don’t measure up in some way, including their looks, performance in school and relationships with friends and family members.” When Lucy describes her “habits of self-consciousness, of always looking down and hiding my face behind my hair or my hand,” I was surprised to catch myself doing these very same things (186). I think books that enable you to reflect upon yourself and your own life are particularly important for young adults and teenagrs, especially reflections about mental health.
Overall I would recommend this book to all readers, but especially ones around the high school age. I think that this book tackles a large event in a way that everyone who reads it can understand. It not only touches on the devastation of cancer, but also childhood, family, fitting in, heartbreak, and bravery.

I saw this book several years back, and it seemed so poignant and too heartbreaking to read. But I did eventually read her story.

It wasn't as harsh as I envisioned. Lucy Grealy had amazing pluck. She never pitied herself; she never let herself go. She was not dormant, writing despite the deep shame of her face. She traveled to other countries, went to school, took lovers.

The book opens with pony parties - and her shame. Flashback - a volleyball hit her about her jaw, it hurt, and her brothers thought she had lockjaw. She went to the dentist and the dentist said she might have fractured it. Then something about a dental cyst - the molar cut into her mandible and one should operate on it before it turned into an infection. She describes in detail her chemotherapy. Her father loved her, and found her pain unbearable. Her mother, though cold and repressed, was extremely sad, and did extra things for her daughter. Her illness hurt her entire family. Regardless, Grealy did well for herself - Sarah Lawrence college, Iowa Writers Workshop - and she did this without bragging. I could say some silly things about the misfortune of it all, and her courage - but that's something that just accompanies the territory. What I found astonishing was her attitude - no self-pity; the jeers - although they cut - she accepted.

Some critics have noted that Grealy writes like poetry and it's true. The book is extremely beautifully written. This is strange to say but she writes precisely - extremely accurate descriptions, and she always manages to find the exact words to tell her story. Something as simple as articulating her desire for water is just done with such astonishing exactness. Not always - but those great sentences just reveal how brilliant she is.

I really enjoyed her book. I was empathetic but my heart did not burst with sadness. She tells her story in an almost matter of fact manner, though it must have been difficult. She might not have said everything, but she is allowed her secrets. No need for degradation and a confessional to be poignant and deep.

An extremely good book.

This book came to my attention AFTER reading Truth and Beauty. I wonder if I'd read this one first if I would have had as much affection for Lucy Grealy as I did by reading Patchett's book first. Lucy in her own voice is sympathetic, inspiring, and at times heartbreaking, but Lucy in Patchett's eyes is a fuller person. I attribute that to the distance in age between Grealy who was a young woman when she wrote Autobiography of a Face and Patchett who, though about the same age as Grealy, wrote her book with more distance and less intensity. I really cannot imagine one book without the other. Grealy's book is angrier and grittier than Patchett's and with reason.

That said, as the parent of a chronically ill child with a life-threatening disease whose spent comparable time in the hospital to Grealy, this book was SO VALUABLE in establishing a greater empathy and emotional caution for my son. I have always been a protective mother, but Grealy's very poignant retelling of her painful childhood and some of its fallout has made me more sensitive to my child's perspective. For that alone this book is extraordinary, but Grealy was also a brilliant and talented writer. This book will break your heart with its beauty and its truth.

Here we have a heartbreaking yet inspiring memoir of a woman’s struggle with facial deformity in an age when immediate beauty is the metric of value, at least as it applies to women. Due to a childhood case of Ewing’s Sarcoma, Lucy Grealy experienced more than 30 surgical procedures on her right jaw and facial structure. As she states in her painful but courageously detailed book, the cancer was not as difficult to endure as the ongoing pain of dismissal and repulsion she met from other people because of her deformity. From the time Lucy was five years old until her death in 2002 at age 39 Lucy Grealy’s single focus was her misshapen jaw and facial features that, after time, caused her to disappear, becoming nothing more than her face. Thus the title of the book, and the imagery it tries and succeeds in portraying.
In a society that scorns difference, and ignores women who fail to measure up to our rigid definition of beauty, a face like Lucy’s stood out as an affront. Told by many people–boys in her elementary school classes, strangers on streets even a homeless person who once gave her money—that she was ‘repulsive,’ Lucy not only came to accept her deformity, she embraced it, and then she wrote about it. As all true writers do, she doesn’t flinch in the writing of her story, but tells it as it was, pain, sorrow, anger, exhaustion and despair included. She details the various self-medication efforts that comfort her, including sex for acceptance with men she hardly knows, alcohol and heroin, the drug that likely killed her.
The reader is tempted to want more about Lucy Grealy, what she loves, what she hates, her fears, hopes, dreams and aspirations. What we get instead is the story of her face, and the convulsive influence its needs and attention demand of her. As tragic as her death was, almost equally so is that the world has been deprived of the ability of this author to report what repulsion does to the soul of human beings, and to report it so well. That may be this reviewer’s only negative comment: Lucy, why did you leave us so soon? Your face may have been singular, but so was your ability to write beautiful words.

How interesting to find that Lucy Grealy tells her story with close to the sort of disassociation one would expect from a reporter. Perhaps she chose this tone purposely. I suppose we'll never know, but I can say that whatever the reason, it worked for me. It's hard to describe how I felt reaching the end of Lucy's journey - first, with her - and then with the afterword by author Ann Patchett. I suppose I can only say that I know what it feels like to live with the presence of pain for years at a time - how both our body and our brain make adjustments to what is tolerable and what small doors of our minds are sealed to make it so - because we have to live, breathe in and out everyday, carry on. But I've never had to live with disfigurement. I'm left thinking that Lucy's defined herself by her face as much as her pain defined her - both physical and emotional. They were her closest friends. Ultimately, it appears to me that it was her inability to find emotional health that was most damaging.

This book was read and reviewed in 2010.

Found this story about what facial deformity did to her self-esteem so interesting, so tender, and so open. Everything she writes about relating to her cancer surgery on jaw at 10, then years upon years of unsuccessful reconstructive surgery after radiation and chemo, is dreadful. But she manages to create little pools of humor and normality by telling exactly what she thought and understood at various ages. Some of the medical ordeals are somewhat horrendous but not told in any gory or frightening way. She tells about her illness and her awareness of it and how treatments made her feel. She's a very graceful writer, easy to see how she was also a good poet. Fate didn't deal her a long life or a very happy outcome, but that is not addressed in the book. I found an entirely different Lucy Grealy than I'd envisioned from her 'best friend' Ann Patchett's book about their long friendship. Not doubting what Patchett had to say specifically - just finding so much more to Lucy.

I love this book, love the writing, which is simple yet lyrical. Mostly, I love Grealy's voice, which never slides into melodrama or pity. It is firm and almost matter-of-face, yet always beautiful. Which is an odd juxtaposition, since beauty or the identity one finds through beauty, is the underlying theme. And identity is what Grealy strives for and fights against and ultimately triumphs over.
Or does she?
Grealy was diagnosed at age 9 with a rare and potentially terminal form of cancer, resulting in the removal of her jawbone, which left her face partially disfigured. She endured over 35 facial reconstruction surgeries, along with merciless bouts of teasing throughout middle and high school.
"They pointed openly and laughed, calling out loudly enough for me to hear, 'What on earth is that?' 'That is the ugliest girl I have ever seen.'"
The best sections of the book, however, are in the descriptions Grealy paints of her family, of being alone in the house in the afternoons, of the hours and weeks she spends in various hospitals.
"Sunday afternoons in the hospital were the stillest and longest--formless hours to be gotten through."
"Autobiography of a Face" also questions the role of women and beauty and how our faces can define yet undermine us. The book leaves readers with nagging and unanswerable questions: What is beauty? How much are we defined by our faces and how much do our faces define us?
Through this journey, Grealy paints a graceful portrait of a life of self-consciousness and pain, endurance and hope and surrender.
"...I looked with curiosity at the window behind him, its night-silvered glass reflecting the entire café, to see if I could, now, recognize myself," she writes at the end.
Although an accomplished and gifted writer, Grealy died of an overdose at the age of 39.
Ann Patchett, a close friend of Grealy's, writes of their relationship in her own memoir, "Truth & Beauty," which paints Grealy in a different light, less controlled, more spontaneous and more serious about her writing, which she considered her true art. It also shows her, at times, as a needy woman desperate for love and attention, a woman who shoplifts books and borrows money she never pays back and is so hungry for love that she mistakes it for sex.
But that's another book, another angle; another story. In "Autobiography of a Face," Grealy's deft writing style captivates readers, revealing an intimate portrait of a girl struggling to understand who she is, and where she fits in the world.
It's an old story, yet one worth reading.

Autobiography of a Face is Lucy Grealy's honest and unflinching look at her own life. It all starts when her jaw collides with a fourth grade classmate. Then she is diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a cancer with only a 5% survival rate, in her jaw. Over time, she goes through not only grueling chemotherapy, but also the removal of part of her jaw (causing the disfiguration of her face) and the countless reconstructive surgeries that follow.

Lucy's story is both inspirational and real. I admire how she admits inconsistencies in her memory, her innermost thoughts, and her insecurities. I liked that she didn't sugarcoat things. She talked about the things she thought as a child, whether they made sense or not, like did her wanting to feel special make her sick or was she too ugly to be loved? She illustrates how painful and time consuming the treatment for cancer is. The side effects for chemotherapy that she had were vomiting, weight loss, radiation burns, loss of appetite, pain, hair loss, and damaged teeth. This doesn't even include the initial removal of part of her jaw (and her disfigured face). To go through this as an adult is unimaginable to me, let alone as a child.

Throughout her life, Lucy experiences many of the same things that most people do, like her awkward relationship with her parents, the painful teasing and tormenting from schoolyard bullies, envy of normal children, fear of death, and her insecurities about her looks. The media's perception of the nature of beauty is so different from real people, that I can understand why the body image issues that typically plague young girls would be so much worse for Lucy. Growing up is hard enough to do without the extra complications she had to go through.

Just a side note: I first heard of this book because Chuck Palahniuk named it as an inspiration behind Invisible Monsters. These two books are very different from each other, but are excellent in their own right.

I didn't realize that our small local library had a section dubbed, "Best Books". It's a sparse couple of shelves in the back. Without a particular book in mind the other day, I decided this was the best spot to grab a book at random. The combination of title and cover photo felt a bit haunting, so I went with it. I'm glad I did.

Though there are plenty of differences, the book constantly put me in mind of "The Glass Castle," maybe one of the best memoirs written in years. Both books have mastered the art of childhood translation. To see big, broad issues deftly scrutinized from the perspective of a nine year-old is absorbing. It makes both books hard to put down. Grealy does this so well, I literally felt to be reading the book as the nine year-old I once was, or at least the nine year-old I think I was. To run through the hospital hallways with Lucy, unnerved by the drastic changes about to come, gave me such a distinct sense of place and time. Additionally, her views of her own parents and their actions and how they handled different family circumstances, left me pondering my own parenting techniques and tendencies. This is truly a well written account of an incredible journey of determination and courage and honesty. Great stuff.

Chris Bowen
Author of, "Our Kids: Building Relationships in the Classroom

I read this autobiography many years ago and it has stayed with me all of these years. Lucy's writing voice is haunting and lyrical and painfully beautiful. I also read Ann Patchett's book, Truth and Beauty, which recounts her friendship with Lucy from their college days up and until Lucy's untimely death. It gave me a fuller understanding of her psyche, and though sometimes unflattering (as most people's lives sometimes are), I was left with an even greater appreciation for Lucy's talent. I recommend this book to all girls coming of age and to women who struggle to learn the lesson life attempts to teach us all, that the way the world perceives us is deeply influenced by the way we feel about our true selves, the fundamental part of us that remains long after beauty has departed.

Get ready for a broken heart but open yourself to seeing others with more compassion. This should be required reading for anyone working with children. The author has a gift of telling not only her horrific story but letting us get inside her thoughts as she was experiencing it. When we see someone with a terrible infliction are we able to put aside our fears and abhorrence and try to experience it and come along side that one with love and understanding and support, not denial and relief that we can walk away whole?
The other reflections in the story are about how we see ourselves and focus on one part and let that part dominate and limit us. This author has a good grasp of what this is about and is able to communicate it. It is the epic journey of one short life. When I finished I had to know the rest of her story. It is so sad but I will leave that to individual readers to research. Lucy will stay in your mind and heart for a long time.

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 extraordinary struggles that she faced. The desire to be loved and feel special, to want to stand out in a singular and unique way and yet not be ridiculed, but rather adored, the simple joy that comes from being able to look at someone and know that they are looking back and see you and know you and understand you, loving you all the while, these emotions run throughout this book and would echo with anyone who has not always felt loved or accepted, who has doubted their worthiness.

CRITICISMS:
I did find that Grealy's siblings were quite absent throughout her narrative. She had four siblings, one of them a fraternal twin, and I found it quite odd that we don't really see that much of them or are given very clear depictions of them - especially her twin sister, Sarah, since all of the twins I've known have always been extremely close with their sibling.

I also found her father's death kind of glossed over and was unable to understand the detachment with which it was written about. That she only visited her father once in the hospital while he was there for a few months seemed incomprehensible to me, but who am I to judge another's grief or how they display it? Grealy later writes of finally feeling the loss of her father, and the regret with which she writes of that moment when she lay in her hospital bed, pretending sleep, and he walked softly in, was very moving and could be acutely felt.

As some other reviewers have mentioned, however, the book is entitled Autobiography of a Face and that is what you are getting.

OF NOTE:
As I was writing this review, I was doing some research online and found out that Lucy Grealy passed away in 2002. Apparently, the brief drug dependency mentioned in passing in Autobiography of a Face reemerged later in life and led to a presumed accidental drug overdose. She was close friends with Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto (P.S.), and there has been some controversy surrounding Patchett's 2004 memoir, Truth & Beauty: A Friendship, which recounts the friendship of the two authors (apparently Grealy's family objects to Patchett's portrayal of her).

The article "Hijacked by grief," by Grealy's sister Suellen, which appeared in the August 7, 2004 edition of the Guardian (and can be found online) was enlightening not only on the family's reaction to Patchett's depictions of Lucy Grealy, but also on the Lucy Grealy herself, in that in an odd way it seemed to offer a missing piece of anything that might have been lacking in Grealy's own account. It greatly altered my previous opinion of Patchett and it also reminded me, both in regards to Patchett's memoir and Grealy's, that any narrative or autobiography writes of other people and that though what may be written is a truthful depiction of what the author felt and experienced, every person detailed has their own story, that somewhere where all of these accounts intersect is some semblance of accuracy and all we can do is understand the deficiency of our own portrayals and appreciate that which can be told.

OTHER REVIEWS:
(This is just a wrap-up of what other people seem to commonly find praise or fault with in this book.)

Positive reviews mentioned the following ...
- Beautifully written and inspiring
- Difficult to read in its honesty and "heartbreaking words"
- "As Grealy shows us in her memoir, she was never different from anyone else: she was always just as imperfect, and beautiful, as we are" (J. Babcock)
- Evokes emotion and empathy, very thought-provoking
- A candid story of the tragedy of cancer and how one woman was able to deal with it all at such a young age, but overcome it in the end
- Accurate criticism of our society's obsession with beauty and looks and that these qualify and determine our worth and lovability

Negative reviews mentioned the following ...
- The book was a long diatribe of self-pity
- She continually and singularly dwells on her own physical ugliness (disregarding the pain of others, that she should be thankful to be alive, etc.)
- Not enough details on other aspects of Lucy Grealy's life were included, no outside story or information on her family, too "one-dimensional" etc.

Books about dealing with and/or surviving cancer number in the thousands, as do their recurrent themes of life affirmation, love and mortality. However, none are so concentrated on self-acceptance and the value of physical beauty as renowned poet Lucy Grealy's 1994 memoir "Autobiography of a Face".

Grealy's memoir traces her life from early childhood all the way to her college years and tracks the painful progression, recovery and aftermath of her illness. Grealy was afflicted with Ewing's sarcoma, a rare cancer that is found in the bones or soft tissues. Only six years old when a malignancy began forming in her jaw and nine when she was officially diagnosed, Lucy underwent several procedures as a result, including a radical surgery that ended up disfiguring her jaw. While most girls her age were whispering of their first crushes on the playground, Lucy was frequenting Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and undergoing radiation and chemotherapy treatments, an excruciating process that robbed her of a normal childhood. Plagued by severe nausea, vomiting and extreme fatigue, Lucy lost a significant amount of weight as well as all of her hair. Barely surfing her teens, she was faced with the fragility of her mortality and the weird and embarrassing notion of wigs to cover her naked scalp, concepts to which a healthy pre-teen girl barely gives a thought. Grealy would go through almost thirty operations to reconstruct her face until finally a recommendation from her sister to Dr. Oliver Fenton in Scotland gave her a small semblance of her life back.

Grealy dealt for many years with a warped sense of self, the image reflected in mirrors and her own perceptions of people's reactions to her a platform for severe depression and a depleted self-esteem. The taunts and stares from classmates only made things worse and Lucy got little respite from her misery save for her many retreats to the hospital and her recovery times from numerous surgeries. She says of her physical countenance, "When I tried to imagine 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." (pg. 177) Grealy more than demonstrates through her retrospection that American culture is utterly consumed by the distortion of female beauty and as a result young girls continuously and methodically fall prey to low self-esteem, poor body image, eating disorders and drug addiction.

Though she found solace in her friendships in college and her work as a writer and poet, Grealy harbored many demons and her problems with substance abuse began with codeine, a painkiller she purposely abused to numb her mind and body. What is not documented here is her eventual dependence and abuse of OxyContin, a painkiller with such a euphoric power that it eventually opened a door to heroin. Grealy met a dark end at the age of 39, her ongoing drug addictions and her underlying depression resulting in an accidental overdose and her subsequent death in December of 2002.

One of the most valuable messages to take from Grealy's memoir is that far too many of us seek perfection on the outside while the inside is forgotten, left behind and veiled by a decorative shell deemed acceptable by society. While the vast majority of us bemoan our dimpled thighs, our cellulite-ridden derriers, our small breasts and sagging complexions, Grealy merely longed for a life unblemished by physical and emotional disfigurement. Too often we need to be reminded of how lucky we truly are and Grealy's poignant and personal account is a significant paradigm for the masses.

Bottom line: A mournful but gripping chronicle of transcendent suffering, "Autobiography Of A Face" will echo long after the grave silencing of Grealy's voice.

Autobiography of a Face was an interesting read. I can't imagine what Lucy went through when she was a child. At first I was enjoying reading the story, but as Lucy got older and the story went on I started enjoying it less and less. Probably because it was more and more about Lucy hating herself which I didn't really connect with through the writing.

At age 9 Lucy was diagnosed with cancer. She had to have a surgery to remove part of her jaw followed by two and a half years of chemo and radiation therapy. Man all the medical things, the chemo, everything sounded terrible. I know I have watched shows where people have cancer and things like that, but none of them describe chemo the way Lucy did. It is like they all try to put on a brave face, where this book tells it like it is. It must be so hard to watch someone go through something like that, or to be the one who is in that situation. Really I felt bad for her. She is so young and has to go through so much. That and her family doesn't seem to be very supportive. After her first chemo appointment the mom is disappointed in Lucy for crying. I was just like geez, this family needs to get it together. If there is anyone that could use a supportive hug, or really just support, it is Lucy. It almost seems like from Lucy's point of view her family was upset with her for being sick. I just can't imagine going through something like this at this age and not having the loving support of my parents. That would make it so much worse and sure doesn't help with the emotional scars this leaves Lucy with.

"I felt my mother was disappointed in me. I hadn't gone straight to bed last time - why was I doing it this time?...

'I know it's hard, but you can't get depressed by it. Don't give in to it. You were not so bad last time, so make sure that what you're feeling isn't just in your head.'"

That is some supportive parenting. It just makes me feel that much more for Lucy and what she went through. Really she says that there were issues at home, but as to what and how bad it was at home I am not sure. We never really get to see that so it is hard to understand why everyone was the way they were, or what exactly she went through at home.

I will say the parts with the medical procedures and her time in the hospitals were the best parts of the book. I really felt like I understood and could sympathize with her. Also I had never heard of this pedestal procedure. That sounds kind of terrifying and I don't question her not wanting anything to do with it. Really this book made me think more about what people with cancer and other illnesses go through. I have been lucky in my life so far to not have first hand knowledge of this, but my heart does go out to those who do. It must be incredibly difficult.

The rest of the book is more Lucy's struggle with her own self worth and image. She thinks she is ugly and that no one will ever love her. I can imagine that the kids in school were horrible to her, but I never really felt like I got to see that. You get bits and pieces, but it doesn't seem as bad as I imagine it really was. Like it wasn't a cake walk, but I didn't really get all the emotions involved like I had hoped. That was the issue by the end. It starts to get more and more of Lucy just going on about how she is ugly, how her face is hideous, how if she had a perfect face everything would be fine (only it isn't when she is 'normal') and I didn't really connect with the emotions that were told. I didn't really feel what she was feeling and going through when it was just her telling us the emotions. It...like I still did feel for her as I kept imagining what it would have been like. How people would have treated her and such, but the writing itself didn't connect me to it as much as I would have liked.

"No matter how philosophical my ideals, I boiled every equation down to these simple terms: was I lovable or was I ugly?"

Since a good chunk of the book is her struggling with her self worth and self esteem and since I wasn't as connected to the emotional part as I had hoped it just started to get to be a bit much. Really I kept reading just waiting to get to the end, which was a bit rushed I think. **slight spoilers I suppose** It was like it was trying to have a sort of happy ending, sort of uplifting, but I didn't really buy it. For the entire book you read how Lucy is not happy with her face, then suddenly she kind of is okay with how she looks because she suddenly has a revelation. Sure. As much as I had really hoped that we could see Lucy actually become okay with herself, grow, be happy even, I didn't believe that she ever really was. I wanted her to be able to get to a good place after all that she had been through, but it just was not to be. Then I looked up her to see what happened after the end of the book since it just kind of ends. Unfortunately she died of a heroine overdose at age 39. Very sad, but based on the book and how much she doesn't think she is lovable because of how ugly she is, not that surprising. I had really hoped that something good would have come of all of this, that she had found her peace and happiness, and maybe now she has. A really sad story with a sad ending. I just wish the emotional parts would have engaged me a bit more. Thinking about the story, what happens, even now is so sad. I just wish the writing would have always backed that up for me.

This review was originally posted to Jen in Bookland

Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy is like no other book I've ever read.

When Lucy was nine years old, she was diagnosed with a form of cancer called Ewing's Sarcoma. Her likelihood of survival was slim. After her surgery to remove part of her jaw, Lucy was permanently disfigured. She had to endure the cruel taunts of her classmates. She also came from a highly dysfunctional family.

Many more surgeries followed to "correct" the disfigurement but they were ultimately unsuccessful, and came at a terrible emotional cost to Grealy.

Since I knew the eventual outcome of Lucy's story I expected to be depressed while reading it. But Lucy was so self-deprecating and had such a sly sense of humor that I enjoyed it tremendously. She wrote several other books but this book is her most lasting legacy.

This book was a huge success for Lucy, giving her the attention that she craved. Alas, it was not to last.

I highly recommend Autobiography of a Face. It is a book that you will not soon forget.

When I first picked up this book and scanned what it was about, I expected it to be a straight-forward account - it is a memoir about growing up with cancer and subsequently, a disfigurement. Therefore, I was surprised when I realized that the book was not what I had been expecting. It turned out to be so much more than just going through the emotional process with her. Even without my being able to relate to the childhood that she had undergone, I still found Grealy to be relatable. She does a very good job of communicating the normalcy that exists for someone who most would not view as normal. Immediately, I found that endearing.

She is an award-winning poet and it shows in her writing, but for the most part, her account does not get lost in the indulgence that sometimes happens with poets. The structure is still clean and easy to walk through, as though you really are just walking along with the author on this journey.

I found the last couple of chapters to have many moments of repetition. She struggles with the concepts of truth and beauty and continually re-mentions this challenge - often the same thoughts, just worded differently. These ideals are clearly important to Grealy and it shows in her need to keep bringing them up. With repetition being the case however, those moments can be taken with grace because there is an understanding that, given what her book is about, these are the focus items of discovery for her (and hopefully for the audience).

All in all, I enjoyed it - she was charming and sweet in this account of her life.

I had already read Ann Patchett's "Truth and Beauty," which is the biography of Lucy told from the point of view of her closest friend. I finished that book disgusted with Lucy and incredulous that everyone gave her such special treatment. I expected to hate "Autobiography of a Face," as it is Lucy's own description of what she went through, mostly in childhood and adolescence. I surprised myself when I finished the book and found I not only had enjoyed it, but also developed more sympathy for Lucy and more understanding for her situation.

At the age of nine, doctors discovered a cancerous tumor on Lucy's jawline. The tumor was removed and was followed by several years of intense radiation and chemotherapy to keep Lucy alive. Despite only having a five percent chance of survival, Lucy beat the odds. The results of the years of treatment, however, were massive facial disfigurations, requiring many more plastic surgeries that in the end failed to ever give her a "normal" face again.

While Lucy waits for the next surgery, which she is sure will suddenly transform her face into something beautiful again, guaranteeing her happiness, she lives with constant torment from classmates and staring from strangers. She learns to hide and tries her best to transcend her own pain, feeling like even more of a failure when she can't stop wishing to look like everyone else.

This story was an honest and heartbreaking tale of how a childhood illness, even when cured, can have devastating effects. I was much more willing to forgive Lucy the selfishness I observed from "Truth and Beauty" after reading this book.

Grealy suffered from terminal cancer that repeatedly caused her jaw to be absorbed into face over the course of her life, starting from age 9. All this medical trauma makes for a great premise, but it is Grealy's lyrical, poetic writing that truly makes this book. Grealy manages to portray cancer and her medical trauma from the point-of-view of a nine-year-old. As a child, she never knew she had cancer, or what the outcome of any particular operation would be. Doctors would say things like "intubation" to the young Grealy and she would be shocked when they later showed up to shove a tube down her throat. She quickly learned not to trust any medical professionals, and her experience could educate a lot of people on how sick children should be treated and involved in their medical procedures.

Grealy moves into her adult life and gives the reader an inside glimpse at the life of someone who "looks different." One might wonder why Grealy went through so many agonizing procedures with small chances of success, but reading this book, the reader feels her constant pain and need to try to improve her appearance.

Anyone who enjoyed Grealy's memoir should pick up the companion follow-up, Ann Patchett's Truth & Beauty: A Friendship. Patchett writes about many of Grealy's surgeries and experiences from the outside view as her best friend (it is odd that Grealy never mentioned Patchett in her memoir, but Patchett dedicated an entire book to their friendship). Patchett provides a bigger picture of this troubled and charismatic woman, and the sum of the two books is greater than their parts. Together, they portray a fascinating woman (Grealy) and the way she interacted with the outside world, whether she was seen as lovable and free-spirited or high-maintenance and overdramatic.

This book contains the memoirs of Lucy Grealy, who survived a deadly childhood cancer, only to have to learn to deal with others' reactions to her severely deformed face. When Grealy was 9 years old, she was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, which necessitated immediate surgery to remove a large portion of her jaw, where the tumor was growing. Following the surgery, she endured several years of radiation and chemotherapy. One of the ideas that kept her going through the ordeal was that one day, her hair would grow back, and life would get back to normal. But by the time her hair grew back, her jaw, or what was left of it, was way out of proportion for her face. Subsequent plastic surgeries were not able to create an ordinary-looking jaw for her, so she had to go through life with a devastating disfigurement that could not be hidden from others.

Grealy is an exceptional writer. She creates powerful images of her childhood experiences, taking the reader into the mind of someone with a severe disability-a disability that society reviles rather than treats with sympathy. She became aware of the necessity to stand alone at a very young age and developed her own strength to live independently. This is a remarkable book whose story will stay with you for years to come.

Although it is true, according to so many who knew Lucy Grealy, that she is spoiled and selfish, it is also true that this book is excellent and thoughtfully written.

Most memoirs most likely leave certain elements out or elaborate others. In Grealy's case, though, she left behind so many people who really had bad personal experiences with her, that there are a lot of people to dispute or criticize her, as well.

That said, even if she was a selfish and spoiled woman, this book is STILL good. It is easy to see, with what she went through, why she became so needy. At such a young age, her self-image was distorted. I think anyone who went through that would be the same. I'm reminded, now, of Frances Kuffel's "Passing for Thin". The criticism of that book was similar to this. She grew up terribly obese, taunted and teased also. And, she had to relearn things the rest of us take for granted when she grew up. Grealy learned everything through such negative experiences, also.

Lucy Grealy considered herself a poet first, then a memoirist. Her memoir reads like poetry and the words she chooses to use serve her well.

After reading this, I read Ann Patchett's "Truth and Beauty" to get a fuller picture of Grealy. Ann's book talked about many things that Grealy's left out. Some reviewers seemed to find this troublesome. I don't think that is the point, however. Grealy shared with us her thoughts and feelings, not Ann Patchett's. Sometimes they were contradictory to Patchett's. Sometimes they were contradictory to her own thoughts at different times. This doesn't make them false; it makes her more real.

I avoided the book for years. The idea of reading about a girl who didn't have a face, or whose face was disfigured, disturbed me. Actually, it scared me.
Finally, seeing it on the front table at the local bookstore and being a little bored by the books surrounding it, I scanned it. The first few paragraphs didn't seem all that bad actually. In fact, they were quite good. The rest of the writing appeared equally polished. And the tone seemed right, from what I could tell, neither maudlin nor angry--but straight down the middle. I also noticed that the book was discounted a dollar or two, a fact that cinched the deal.
As it happened, I would have paid full price and ten times full price. This is a priceless book. It reminds the reader how precious good fortune is, how ephemeral our sense of ourselves can be, how cruel people are, how kind they can be, how blessed is childish igorance, and how deep courage can run when it happens that an extraordinary person is extraordinarily tested. The book is a lesson for life. It has the force of nature itself. Reading the book is like looking into a clear night sky and being at once reduced and ennobled by the endlessness of possibility.

Lucy Grealy grew up in a dysfunctional home, with parents who were more likely to encourage her to "be brave and don't cry" than to demonstrate their love for her. At age 9, Lucy was diagnosed with a serious cancer in her jaw and she underwent a seemingly endless series of surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation treatments. True to form, her mother counseled her not to cry despite the frightening and painful ordeal she was going through. Often, she was simply dropped off and left alone to deal with the mental and emotional traumas that she was experiencing. After the surgery which removed a large part of her jaw, she had to deal with taunting and curious stares from others. It is no wonder that Lucy had to develop inner strategies to deal with the misery that was her life. In this book, she details the mental gymnastics she went through to simply cope on a day to day basis. One of the startling things that emerges from this book is that, despite its horrors, the hospital provided her with a place of respite where the nurses and other patients accepted her in a way that the outside world never did. Her whole life seemed to be a search for unconditional love, for people who would love and accept her despite her inner and outer flaws. This is a brilliant and lyrical book despite its sad content.

Lucy Grealy writes poignantly and poetically about the way her battles with cancer
of the jaw have affected her life since childhood. This autobiography chronicles
her surgeries, struggles, denial and, finally, acceptance of herself as the mirror of
her face. Facing things might be an apt metaphor here.

The metaphor of face, along with her identification of self as she deals with the
ravages wrought on her face, are examined from many different vantage points.
At first, Ms. Grealy is in denial that she has become different looking. She then
avoids any acknowledgment of how she's changed post-surgeries.

The story shows no self-pity. Rather, she shares the evolution of her life, family,
and growing self-awareness in a chronology of events marked by treatments and
surgeries. This is a beautiful book!!!!

Lucy Grealy writes poignantly and poetically about the way her battles with cancer
of the jaw have affected her life since childhood. This autobiography chronicles
her surgeries, struggles, denial and, finally, acceptance of herself as the mirror of
her face. Facing things might be an apt metaphor here.

The metaphor of face, along with her identification of self as she deals with the
ravages wrought on her face, are examined from many different vantage points.
At first, Ms. Grealy is in denial that she has become different looking. She then
avoids any acknowledgment of how she's changed post-surgeries.

The story shows no self-pity. Rather, she shares the evolution of her life, family,
and growing self-awareness in a chronology of events marked by treatments and
surgeries. This is a beautiful book!!!!

Beautifully written, Autobiography of a Face is a story of disfigurement, and of the author's inability to cope with looking different than others. Grealy writes movingly of her childhood illness, her attempts to avoid brutal chemotherapy when young, the social problems she later faced as the result of having a damaged jaw, and the many failed attempts to reconstruct her jaw via plastic surgery. A searing indictment of our society's focus on looks, and how people who look different are often mistreated.

***********SPOILER ALERT**************

The main flaw I see with this book is that it attempts to provide an "happy ending" where none existed -- the book makes it sound as if Grealy was able to improve her looks with plastic surgery, when in fact the surgery attempts all failed.

"Part of the job of being human is to consistently underestimate our effect on other people . . ."--Lucy Grealy

Lucy Grealy's memoir, Autobiography of a Face, is an account of her childhood and young adulthood struggling with surgeries, treatments, and disfigurement from Ewing's sarcoma, a rare cancer of the jaw. She conveys so well the aloneness of a sick child, at the mercy of hospital staff, and the effect of looking different from other people. Even when she wasn't confined to a sick ward, she and her mother traveled into New York, day after day, for her chemotherapy or radiation.

Grealy became wise in the ways of humans' weaknesses, their cruelty, foibles, and pride. But she is searingly honest as well about herself, about her hubris and her unsympathetic insularity.

Grealy's life spawned a second great memoir, novelist Ann Patchett's Truth and Beauty, about her friendship with Grealy that began when they were MFA students together and ended when Grealy, after long suffering and struggles with addiction, died of an overdose. Truth and Beauty is a sad, wise, beautifully told story, recently reissued in paperback.

Our book group is reading Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett and decided to read Autobiography of a face as well, and I am glad we did. Lucy Grealy writes her painful story from age 9 and we are with her every step of the way through her many painful ordeals.

Lucy is a seemingly normal 9 year old child growing up in a disjointed and admittedly dysfunctional family. She is diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma, a cancer with an alrmingly low survival rate. Although she has a twin sister, she rarely talks about her. You get the impression the family is not close, nor are they very supportive of one another. When her father is hospitalized for a serious illness, Lucy only goes to see him one time. Although the stay is extensive, they just stay at home, waiting for phone updates on their father's condition. Only her mother seems to make many appearances at the hospital where Lucy spends the majority of her pre-pubescent years.

Lucy Grealy is a person who is obssessed with her appearance. She talks about not really knowing who she is and what she looked like before her surgery, therefore, her post surgery appearance is the defining one for her. She is grossly disfugured, not only by the cancer and the resulting surgeries and treatments, but by the many surgeries performed in an attempt to repair the damage. Unfortunately, no clear thinking adult ever steps forward to get this poor child any kind of counseling or therapy, and she spends much of her life tortured by secret shame. She strives to be strong enough to make her mother proud, to be the model patient and to portray herself as a person who really doesn't care about her appearancence. Sadly, as most women know, this is not the case, especially in a society obsessed by appearances.

In my review of Truth and Beauty, I refer to the article Lucy Grealy's sister Suellen wrote in reaction the the publication of that book. My question to the Grealy family would be; where were all of you? I understand the family had many problems, but to be angry at Patchett and the other friends of Lucy's who were their for her when her own family wasn't seems misplaced. especially because the publication of this book precedes that of this book. And Lucy's own book is clearly an indictment of the disinterest of the Grealy family.

This is the life story of an extremely unhappy and disturbed person. She needed serious therapy to deal with her serious physical illness and all its side effects. Sadly, she was neglected in this way. Yes, through her writing and many of her relationships (some healthy, most not) she found a way in the world, but if you read Truth and Beauty and learn of the rest of her life through the eyes of a bystander, you see the personality that develops from the pain that was her early life. Well written and fast moving, this (Lucy's book) is a different kind of story than any other you will ever read. Brutally honest and excuciatingly sad, Lucy seemed to believe all she was was a face, and the only way to true happiness was to be loved and adored by a "lover." If only she was able to embrace herself as so much more than just a face, but a spirit that transcended what she looked like. If the title was Autobiography of a Soul, this would have been a different book, and this life may have had a different outcome...

The Autobiography of a Face, by Lucy Grealy, is an incredibly well written and heart wrenching memoir. Grealy tells her story, with great strength, of being diagnosed with cancer at an extremely young age, while facing the cruel reactions and taunts of peers after almost a third of her jaw is removed, leaving her face disfigured.
Sharing one’s experiences with a personal event, an illness in the case, is always extremely difficult to do, especially with complete strangers. However, Grealy takes an incredible risk in this book, and shares to the readers each of her innermost experiences with the cancer in immense detail. Personally, these risks she takes I think are what makes the book so well written. Behind these experiences are deep emotions, making the writing strong. The risks/experiences build Grealy up to be an extremely likeable character, because they fill the reader up with empathy for her; we want to keep reading and rooting for her throughout the entire book. An example of a risk is on page 132, where Grealy is in the hospital calling for a nurse to help her go to the bathroom but it ends up being too late, “I called and called for a nurse or an aide, but finally I couldn’t stand it any longer and, with great relief, let go and peed right there in the bed. I had to lie in it until it was cold and had spread though all of the sheets before an aide finally, almost comically, walked in with a bedpan…She shook her head and said that when she heard someone had peed in the bed, she though it must have been a baby.” This is an extremely embarrassing moment for her, but by sharing it with the readers it builds empathy for her character. Grealy provides the readers in this passage (and throughout the book) with this blunt yet vivid detail, while making herself seem extremely vulnerable and child like. Because she shares this very personal experience, many of us won’t even have to endure in our lifetime, her writing becomes very powerful and effective in creating her as a likeable character.

Grealy was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma at the age of nine. From then on, her life was divided into two parts before and after cancer. After the surgery to remove half her jaw, Grealy spent over two years enduring weekly chemotherapy treatments. When she was finally declared 'healthy', Grealy returned to the sixth grade -- only to be met with scorn and cruelty from her classmates.

Her story is written clearly and concisely. She is unerringly honest about how her disease affected her family, her developing personality, and those around her. As we follow her through years of skin and bone grafts, we witness her need or acceptance from others and her gradual acceptance of herself.

I was particularly struck by Grealy's need to be 'strong.' She is constantly reminded not to cry and to never show fear. This begins Grealy's quest to be the model patient. I am amazed that this small child was able to internalize and minimize her emotions, suffering, and considerable pain. To me, she seemed like an adult soul in a child's body.

I recommend Autobiography of a Face -- it is a moving and meaningful read.

I just finished Autobiography of a Face and I found it just a beautiful, touching read. Lucy writes with such incredible introspection and heartfelt feeling that one must stop from time to time to just reflect on her insight. I truly wondered where she got the strength to endure all that she did. I felt her emptiness in situations and yet her strength inspite of it. Her mother just seemed to totally not get the whole experience or at least couldn't deal with it, so Lucy was left to her own devices. The insight into the boy she meets in the hospital who is paralyzed after a diving accident just blew me away. She writes, "I did it for him. I'd close my eyes to feel the height, see the bright blue of the pool winking below me, bend my legs, and feel the pull in my calves as I jumped up and then down, falling from one world of unknowing into the next one of perpetual regret." What a gut-wrenching insight into the soul of this young man. She allowed me to view the world from a whole new perspective and I thank her wherever she may be. She was definitely an old soul who hopefully fulfilled her karma.

After reading this memoir, I have nothing but the utmost respect and awe for Lucy Grealy. Through her straightforward, yet eloquent descriptions of surviving cancer, she emerges as perceptive and courageous, as say Anne Frank (although I'm sure she'd be embarrassed at such a comparision). What impressed me the most, was how alone she seemed undergoing chemotherapy and the subsequent operations to rebuild her jaw. Her parents are portrayed as ill equipped to deal with her illness, the very people she should have been able to turn to for comfort and support. That she had such a rich inner world as a substitute is amazing, and though the memoir leaves us uncertain of how she went on to navigate life with a restored jaw, we are never left in any doubt that she made it.

With great description and vivid detail, Lucy Grealy explains the traumatic effects of living with cancer treatments and a crooked jaw line in her memoir, The Autobiography of a Face. Grealy reveals her inner thoughts of self-consciousness in her everyday interactions, portraying how even a simple conversation can provoke great anxiety: "Out of nowhere came an intense feeling that he shouldn't be looking at me, that I was too horrible to look at, that I wasn't worthy of being looked at, that my ugliness was equal to a great personal failure" (185). Though most people can connect with having been self-conscious at one point in their lives, Grealy lives with the torment daily, avoiding mirrors and trying to overcome the frustration.
Though she writes in past tense speaking in a conversational tone, she occasionally speaks from her present self, referring to times such as "years later." Readers may either feel relieved that there is a resolved ending or frustrated at the break in character: "Some years later, I don't remember exactly how many, as my family was milling about the kitchen and I was leafing through the paper at the table, someone dated an event as something that had happened `before Lucy had cancer'" (43). The two headed narrator allows us to understand that her current self is still not undergoing cancer and acts as a pause from her younger voice.
Grealy's extended period of time in a hospital has allowed for great observation using the senses: "The smells and sounds were so familiar--the sweet disinfectant and wax, always an aroma of overcooked food in the background, the metallic clinks of IV poles as they were pushed along the floor on their stands" (183). By giving distinct imagery and specific examples, readers can picture themselves accompanying her through her journey. The powerful imagery parallels the powerful emotions. Her captivating descriptions of the treatments and obstacles of ugliness and death brought me to tears. The stirring story spills out onto the paper using the literary techniques of a two headed narrator and poignant descriptions. By drawing us into her memoir, we understand the significance of self-image and the appreciation of survival.

Karin Lavie

Lucy Grealy does a fine job at conveying her character without explicitly stating the whole picture. There are many times where Lucy confidently states her strength and bravery, yet still writes about certain “truths” that she may not be as proud of, in order to shape her character. On page 36 Lucy writes: “I’d consciously packed no stuffed animals to bring to the hospital. It was of paramount importance that I appear adult, strong, unafraid.” Although she acknowledges to the reader that she was determined as ever to put up a good face and remain strong through her many hospital visits, she still includes the fact that she has stuffed animals waiting at home, only reminding the reader that she is merely a child. This particular moment highlights the writing technique that she consistently uses throughout the book, one being: including bits and pieces of her character in the midst of her story or within certain scenes.
In parallel to her character development comes the emotions she is able to portray. Lucy explains the effects of chemotherapy in a matter-of-fact way, yet is able to capture the details necessary to truly toy with the reader’s emotions. On page 79 Lucy explains, “I quickly learned to judge food not by hat it tasted like in eating but how it tasted when I threw it back up. Vanilla pudding was best…” forcing her reader to realize the circumstances in which Lucy has grown accustomed to. This scene in particular took a punch to my emotions because I have a brother very close in age as Lucy was in this part of her life, and I simply thought of him having to go through the same thing. To think that a middle-school student has to decide what food she eats based on its taste when she throws it up is excruciatingly difficult to wrap your mind around. Despite upsetting feeling it triggers, it is very effective in not only creating a vivid imagine in the reader’s mind, but also in making their heart ache for the situation she is going through. These subtle writing techniques make her story unique, for they build her character as well as bring the reader into the mindset that she was, something I should consider when writing my memoir.

Lucy toys with our emotions throughout the book, something I need to do when writing my memoir. If my heart aches, so should the reader’s. Telling my emotions may allow the reader to understand my view, however the reader will not remember my story because they were unable to empathize. It is far easier for me to pinpoint certain scenes within the book when I myself have empathized with Lucy. I felt the presence of a child on page 71 when Lucy writes of her time spend in Radiotherapy. Lucy writes, “Radiotherapy seemed as good a place as any to practice for a disaster at sea” only solidifying a child’s imagination. Prior to her views on Radiotherapy I thought of my reactions to Radiotherapy; how scared I would feel if I were to be put in a small tube holding my breath. Yet when I read this passage it reminded me that in a child’s eye, everything is a game, and fear is last on the list.
In conjunction with the emotions Lucy is able to show the readers, we are reminded of the age she is in every chapter, not by telling the age, but rather by showing how she thinks or acts. When the nurse, for example, explains to Lucy that her surgery will take four hours, Lucy simply says “I’d been told it would take a whole four hours, which was certain to elevate my social status on the ward.” Once again the readers are humbled by Lucy’s response, for it is far different that the one we would’ve had upon hearing the same news. Rather than simply laughing at her response, we are reminded of her age. Lucy is able to inform the readers of her age simply by stating the things she does or doesn’t do, or by explaining her thought process. Rather than writing in retrospect and making a conscious effort to inform the readers of her age at every moment, she uses actions - something far more effective. Readers are likely to forget her age if mentioned, but are unlikely to forget if they hear a cute story in relation to their age. This will play a crucial role in my memoir when I transition from scenes that occur many years apart.

Many reviewers have beautifully reviewed this haunting memoir. I just wanted to add how touched I was by Lucy's struggle, not to be special, but to be normal. Her memoir describes acutely the psychic distress of finding oneself outside the norm in society. Despite Lucy's struggle for acceptance and normalcy, she still displays true wisdom and strength from her "outsider" perspective. Some think her stance toward others is unsympathetic, I found her to be as unflinching in revealing her thoughts and found her level of awareness of herself refreshing, if self-oriented, at times. There is something about standing out in an unwanted way that can create a barrier between us and the rest of the world and perhaps Lucy had a protective barrier that closed her off from others. Who am I to judge, I just stand in awe of the courage she displays time and again. Other reviewers also criticize Lucy for not overcoming her need for acceptance, or normalcy. I can only thank Lucy for incarnating and being who she was, so honestly, so vulnerably, and for offering us an uncensored, heart-breaking, and ultimately revealing view of her experience of the world. I am sure many will resonate with the experience of being "outcast" and feel we have a friend and supporter in Lucy. Thanks Lucy, for not putting any masks on in your writing but allowing us to see you in your true complexity. I salute you wherever you may be.
I recommend that those moved by Lucy's story read "Truth and Beauty: A Friendship, written by Lucy's friend Ann Patchett,in order to get a more complete picture of this complex and vital being who left us far too young.

I ran across Grealy's "Autobiography of a Face" before I became a public librarian, but this book travelled with me and remains with me still. Oftentimes, teachers ask me to present a biography to their students. Lucy's story is a painful one, but far more important than most of the human arrogance that lines most biography shelves of many libraries. I usually choose Lucy's story to present to children who are of middle school age and older. It is an arresting and interesting read, not to mention a quick one, and what students come away with is an intimate and often uncomfortable look, not only at a facially disfigured woman, but at themselves. The only other books about real people that have left a greater impact on my own life are the Bible, Bunyan's "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners," and "The Elephant Man: a Study in Human Dignity" by Ashley Montagu.

This autobiography is the epitome of heartbreaking. As a child, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with a rare form of terminal cancer. Two and a half years were devoted to chemotherapy and radiation treatments; she survived, but a third of her jaw did not. The horror one might assume from this situation wasn't present: Grealy had no idea she might die, even though the survival rate for Ewing's sarcoma was only five percent. She does not present her parents as overly afraid for her life, either. Her memoir is not a story about the fear of death. Instead, Grealy tells a story about not fitting in, about unbearable pain that takes up residence in one's head as loneliness and confusion, about questioning what things mean, about being scared and lost in your family, about enduring intense physical pain, and about figuring out who you are. She was a talented writer; that her skill is not overwhelmed by the bare facts of her story proves as much. One of the questions Grealy asks early on is, "how do we go about turning into the people we are meant to be?" For her, for years, the answer didn't come because of what she saw, or what she didn't see, or couldn't look at in the mirror. Years of vicious school taunting and reconstructive surgeries took their toll. "Sooner or later" she tells us, "we all have to learn the words with which to name our own private losses." I think that is what she is doing in this book, finding the right words for her story, in crafting art from the substance of her life. This book seemed more interesting than an autobiography; most of which are redundant, boring, and frankly don't appeal to many people. Grealy's, however, seemed as if it were a first-person novel. It was much more intriguing, more exciting, jaw-dropping, and drew sympathy out of its readers. It was raw, honest, and perplexing, but still very enjoyable, very capturing.

In today's society surgery shows on television shows that change people's complete physical appearance are extremely popular, yet rarely depict the true side of the story. They never evoked emotion; they only explain the objective, medical side to the story. But reading the memoir of an innocent child battling cancer, which would change her appearance forever, took medicine to a completely emotional and heart-felt level. I could never imagine what it would feel like for a nine-year-old child to go through countless surgeries and painful chemotherapy sessions. But Lucy Grealy's use of powerful words, gives the reader almost a sense that they too are experiencing these moments along with Grealy. As her first operation commences she explains, "The gas was overpowering...I couldn't take it any longer and rolled over to vomit" (Grealy 24). But just as if we were too going under the knife, she never explains the operation and without a transition moves right into waking up just as a person would remember an operation, "The very last thing I wanted to do just then was open my eyes, let alone speak to this woman, who was now asking me the most ridiculous question I'd ever heard: Lucinda, what time is it?...My first operation was over" (Grealy 24). By only describing what she felt and experienced personally, the reader is transported right into the story. Furthermore, Grealy goes beyond the hospitals and doctors by sharing with the reader her struggle with the meaning of her deformity and her struggle with acceptance. After years of wondering why it happened to her and not someone else, Grealy proclaims, "No longer feeling that I was being punished, as I had during the chemo, I undertook to see my face as an opportunity to find something that had not yet been revealed" (Grealy 180). Grealy's ability to look beyond the physical deformity and attempt to turn it into a positive asset to her life really evokes to the reader that physical appearance really means nothing compared to the beauty inside of a person. Grealy's story of overcoming such a physically and emotionally challenging surgery adds such a different level onto the numerous television shows and stories about surgery and life changing experiences that the mass media portrays to the public nowadays.

A person diagnosed with cancer is often depressed and devoid of hope. However, when Lucy Grealy is diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma at the age of nine her naivety about the severity of her illness allows her to bask in the attention from doctors and well-wishers. In Grealy's memoir, Autobiography of a Face, this youthful innocence leads her to face a four-hour surgery with enthusiasm as it "was certain to elevate [her] social status on the ward" (54). Through this anecdote and others, the author very effectively paints a trusting child too young to fear cancer or even question her recovery. Lucy's character is well-developed and likeable, leading the reader to cheer her journey to wellness.
Key supporting characters are unfortunately lacking the richness and development needed to complete our understanding of the main character. Most notably, her mother's superficiality is unexpected and not well-explained or put into perspective. We simply dislike the mother as she undermines Lucy's confidence by bringing home short-sleeve turtleneck sweaters to cover the scar Lucy has on her neck (121). Lucy's reconstructive surgeries comprise a large portion of the story, so it would be interesting to understand the source of her mother's superficiality and whether it was their relationship that led to twenty years of painful pursuit of perfection under a surgeon's knife.
Similarly, we learn close to nothing about Lucy's father or his personality. When he passes, it is disconcerting to see Grealy's insouciance over his death and excitement toward his insurance money. While Grealy may or may not be justified in her reaction, the reader misses an opportunity to understand her better and is simply forced to judge her harshly.
Overall, this novel is inspiring and conveys a great message about the need to except oneself and one's fate, and perhaps even that expecting to get well contributes to recovery. The universal message is to pragmatically deal with the cards one is dealt and .that no one can swap them for other ones in the deck, regardless of their desire.

Superbly written, Ms. Grealy's book does not spare us the rawness of her struggles, both in the descriptions of the medical procedures and the recountings of the taunts and jeers of her male peers.

At times I felt Lucy had the same condescension for the reader as she had for her jeering peers. She pulled us in so that we had sympathy no matter how much her words and tone insisted she did not want sympathy. Then she would abruptly turn and show us the ugliness of disease, as if to say, "Here, you will look. I will not let you turn away."

Particularly jarring was the chapter ironically entitled "The Petting Zoo." A visit to the animal research lab gives us a literal and metaphorical glimpse of the truths a very young Lucy had to face.

I could not find Lucy lovable, but I was awed by her tremendous courage and her poignant humanity. I was glad she did not let us turn away.

I expected this book to be much grittier and "confessional" in tone, so I was not prepared for the ease and grace of Lucy Grealy's writing. Grealy's recounting of her childhood battle with a serious form of cancer and the years of reconstructive surgery that follows is at once introspective and detached.

I agree with some of the other reviewers who said they felt Grealy was revealing only what she wanted the reader to know -- that there's more to this story than what she included here. While I found this intriguing and slightly frustrating, I did not feel cheated. Had Grealy lived, there might have been other books that focused on other aspects of her illness and surgeries -- how it affected her family's daily life, her relationships with her siblings (especially her twin sister), and so on. Issues that were only touched upon in this book, but which could have formed the thematic basis for several subsequent memoirs.

Though I was a little disappointed not to have been given more information about those things in this book, I realize that the title of the book is "Autobiography of a Face," and the focus of the book is exactly that -- this the story of Lucy Grealy's face, and "how it got that way." While her careful honing and focusing of the book's contents did leave me slightly dissatisfied because of all the other things I wanted to know, I can't deny what looks like a marvelous job of Grealy remaining true to her intended subject.

I must confess, I'm looking forward to reading Ann Patchett's "Truth and Beauty," which allegedly offers a look at Lucy Grealy that differs from what Grealy allows us in her own book.

Autobiography of a Face was Lucy Grealy's first book and an inspiring insight into her battle with cancer, and life in the years afterward. The majority of the story takes place during her earlier years of life intermixed between her suburban home and hospital care.
From the science side of things, not much information is given about her cancer or the biology involved with it. But, the book gave me a clearer understanding of what it's like to live with cancer. The detailed descriptions of the pain and suffering involved through chemotherapy treatment was something you can't get from a purely informational source, and I believe the book's emotional vie of cancer helped with my understanding of specifically Ewing Sarcoma Tumors and other types of cancer as well. When compared with the technology available at the time of her diagnosis and the aspects of Ewing sarcomas in general, Lucy's story is truly remarkable. EWS are very rare, and the chance of survival, especially at the time, make Lucy's case even more of a miracle.
Because Lucy Grealy's cancer scarred her teenage years the most, I was able to place myself in her position and imagine being treated the way she was. I admire her strength and courage to face the dramatic world of high school, day after day while people constantly criticized her facial scarring. I also admire her ability to control herself so well while in immense pain. I would never be able to keep a complacent composure while receiving chemotherapy. I also admire her strive to surpass physical beauty, by understanding the true inner beauty in seemingly ordinary things.

Do not misunderstand this review's title: it is not an apology, but rather a defense of what I consider to be one of the most hauntingly beautiful, well-crafted memoirs written in the last fifty years. Writing an autobiography of any kind is full of pitfalls--lapses into solipsism, half-truths, egoistical blathering--which Grealy avoids without even making the reader aware of her dexterity.

"Are you crazy?" critics of Grealy's work may ask. "The book is full of self-pity, lies and self-absorption." Descriptions I read of encounters with Grealy after she became a literary notable would certainly seem to validate these judgments.

But if the reader evaluates her memoir with the sensitivity and intellectual rigor it demands, the reader discovers that Grealy is not whiny at all. If she vacillates in her judgment of herself, if she shows us the tortuous feelings of self-pity and ugliness she felt, she is at the same time showing us an honest portrait of a human being in all its contradictory glory. Does the reader expect Grealy to act unaffected by the taunts of her peers, the pain of chemo treatments, the pain of knowing she will never be given what she wants? Who wouldn't have indulged the fantasies she did, considering her age and the severity of her condition? Has any one of us, her readers, undergone such unremitting physical and emotional pain?

As for Grealy's supposed detachment, we might say such distance is both necessary and understandable, considering when she wrote the memoir. Wordsworth noted that poetry, which I think applies to Grealy's work (I'm paraphrasing), is "an emotion recollected in tranquillity"--not while the passions are churning, but after the fact, when the writer can calmly assess the feelings and their significance. Grealy's memoir is written by an adult, not a child. Although she skillfully takes the reader back to her childhood emotions, she maintains an authorial distance that looks at the pain without succumbing to it over and over again. We wouldn't want her to do otherwise.

I encourage critics to read her autobiography again, or for the first time, with an open mind more sensitive to the intimate lyricism with which Grealy recounts her early life. Perhaps her subsequent struggles (with drugs, with fame) rub against us because we believe she should have led a more blameless life. But as Grealy shows us in her memoir, she was never different from anyone else: she was always just as imperfect, and beautiful, as we are.

Lucy Grealy's memoir, Autobiography of a Face follows her story of a young girl starting at about age ten and her struggle with dealing with serious cancer that infected her jaw and the painful surgery that reconstructs her face. Her writing is poetic like and pretty. I was also very amused and found many parts of her writing funny. "I wasn't particularly thrilled with the wired-shut [broken jaw] part, but I was too involved with the idea of venturing off to a hospital emergency room to think much about it. My two absolute favorite programs television programs were Emergency and Medical Center" (20). Grealy manages to keep a pretty light tone throughout her memoir considering her the serious situation that followed most of her life. Her humor kept me chuckling to myself throughout most of the book, even through more serious parts.
That's not to say that at times I did not feel her heartbreaking emotions at certain points in this overall sad novel. "Outside of school I'd catch adults staring at me all the time. I played games with them in stores, positioning myself just so...and trap them as they averted their embarrassed stares. Groups of boys were what I most feared, I ducked into an empty doorway..." (141). When I read this passage I truly felt horrible for Lucy. Throughout the memoir I felt bad for everything her cancer put her through, all the hospital visits and weakening medicine and treatments she went on. But for some reason this passage was truly heart wrenching for me because I saw all the precaution steps and methods she had for just dealing with just a simple trip to a drugstore and walk down a school hallway.
I think that one of the main reasons Lucy wrote this novel was to show that even through her obviously hard and painful battle with cancer, Lucy had a truly exciting and lively life. All though she spent a lot of her childhood in hospitals she still is vibrant and young. She definitely gets her message across that she was a survivor at heart.

Diagnosed at 9 years old with Ewing's sarcoma, Lucy Grealy not only had to live life with cancer in the jaw, but she had to live a life where she thought she can never be loved or accepted by anyone. She tells her life story on what struggles she had to go through and how she got through them all. Personally I always thought that Biographies or Autobiographies were not that interesting and bored me, but after reading this Autobiography; I was able to take things from it rather than feeling confused with the author. I really enjoyed this Autobiography because it was very easy to read, the author used a lot of words that I understood clearly without making her autobiography informal. For example she used words such as; Forbidden, desperation, saturated, operation, cautiously, etc. I would say this autobiography can be understood at the age of 14. I say this because the vocabulary is similar to words that young teens would use. I would recommend this Autobiography to young teen girls or woman particularly because girls are more emotional when it comes to their appearance.

----Lucy Grealy's memoir, Autobiography of a Face, portrays the unique voice of a child suffering from cancer. Through honest narrations and intricate descriptions Grealy takes the audience through the cancer process and still manages to give hope to any reader. Grealy does a beautiful job of integrating her young naivety with the storyteller's knowledge after-the-fact. When talking about finding ways to make herself sick to avoid chemotherapy, Grealy uses a hidden optimism to explain the internal conflict. "I never scratched forcefully enough to break the skin or draw blood. Something always held me back, and for the longest time I thought it was cowardice" (97). The continuously positive voice finds the "silver lining" out of any situation. Grealy never doubts that this disease is going to beat her, despite the fact that Ewing's sarcoma, the cancer that Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with, has only a 5% survival rate.

----Once she conquers the cancer, Grealy transitions into a completely separate struggle, coming to terms with the scars the disease left, physically and emotionally. Even as a young schoolgirl, she is ridiculed for her appearance by her peers. Not only have the numerous surgeries left her face disfigured, but the intensive chemotherapy caused her to bald. Comments such as `"Hey, girl, take off that monster mask - oops, she's not wearing a mask!" became a regular occurrence for her. Grealy As a result, she separated herself from her classmates and tried to fill the social gap with the company of horses, finding comfort in the fact that "horses neither disapproved nor approved of what [she] looked like" (152). Through this struggle, however, Grealy is once again able to voice the thoughts of an optimist. "Actually, in my mind, my face looked even better than okay, it looked beautiful. But it was a beauty that existed in the future, a possible future. As it was, I hated my face" (176). She believes that one day surgery will undo the marks it once left and she will eventually be beautiful. Her reflections about beauty and its connection to love leave an impact on any reader and make them reconsider their own insecurities. "If only I could get someone to have sex with me, it would mean that I was attractive, that someone could love me. I never doubted my own ability to love, only that the love would never be returned" (206).

Lucy's story is a compelling one. Being faced with cancer at a young age is difficult. Being subjected to the treatments is difficult. Adding to that having your face changed in that manner and being able to work through it was a remarkable feat and took strength.

It is a book that helps put many things in our life in perspective in both what we think are events and circumstances that are "too much" to handle when on reflection they are well within being nothing more than a minor annoyance and how we relate to and judge others. It also shows how strong people can be.

The descriptions of what she went through and had to endure are detailed and disturbing and at times extremely unsettling. It still winds up as ultimately being a postive book, albeit sad.

This was an extremely painful and personal read for me. I loved it, Lucy Grealy tells her story so well but as someone who also grew up with a very noticeable physical deformity it was hard to read. I wish I had had the opportunity to read this in my teens.

A disturbing but beautifully written memoir of a woman who has struggled her entire life with the personal ravages caused by cancer of the jaw. She was initially treated and diagnosed at age 9 or 10 and subsequently endured endless, mostly failed, surgical assaults on her face.

The memoir Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy serves as a testament to her tragic yet heroic life, while illustrating her wit and charm as a writer. Within the first few pages, we learn that Lucy, at the time eighteen, has suffered from cancer throughout her childhood and as a result is deeply affected by it physically and emotionally. The preceding chapters are where Lucy's story truly begins, as we are introduced to a much younger Lucy: the pre-cancerous, tomboy, wild-child. It is difficult to read these scenes with the sadness that her already fragile world will soon become further broken by her cancer diagnosis. In this way, we automatically gain an understated respect and love for Lucy character. As Lucy journeys through the rest of her childhood, she continues to win over our hearts. By developing her parents as key characters, we learn much about Lucy through how she interacts with them. As Lucy's parents slowly distance themselves throughout her illness, Lucy learns to be independent. Lines such as, "It was the moment when I understood unequivocally: I was in this alone, (p.37)" make Lucy our hero, even at her young age. Instead of resenting her parents, Lucy's character remains honorable by choosing to explain her parent's abandonment as their own way of dealing with the cancer. Aside from Lucy's strong, independent character, Lucy's child-like curiosity and mischievousness further draws us in. For example, as Lucy and her friend Derek trick the candy striper into taking them to see the caged animals, you cannot help but admire her genuine curiosity and adventurous spirit, especially all while being hospitalized for cancer.

In addition, Lucy Grealy provides careful detail in her character and setting descriptions. The reader feels as if they were a constant bystander to her life as well as her thoughts. Through her descriptions of characters and circumstances, we learn more about her as a character. For example, Lucy describes animals by writing, "I considered animals bearers of higher truth, and I wanted to align myself with their knowledge. I thought animals were the only beings capable of understanding me" (p.5). In this way, she is able to de animals as define animals as knowledgeable and wise beings, while showing a vulnerable and lonely part to herself through craving their knowledge and company. In another example, Lucy describes her post-surgery state, "I quickly learned to judge food not by what it tasted like in eating but how it tasted when I three it back up. Vanilla pudding was best" (p.79). Here we listen to the quirky, fun voice that Lucy often weaves in; however, at the same time we are stopped and in awe of the seriousness of her condition.

While reading the book, the reader also find reoccurring themes and threads that are brilliantly and symbolically placed. Along with some of her other themes such as references to television shows, beauty and money, her fate references are mapped out throughout the book. Usually after a major trauma, Lucy drifts into a state of deep thought in which she questions Fate and its role in her life. Early in the book, Lucy writes, "Our fates were already perfectly mapped out within us, just as we once waited perfectly inside of our mothers, who themselves were held within the depths of their mothers, our great-grandmothers" (p.27). She significantly places this quote after describing the head collision in gym class, which would ultimately lead to her diagnosis of cancer. Further into the book, Lucy describes her second week of chemo, "This was dread. It wasn't some unknown black thing revealed itself to me and, knowing that I knew I couldn't escape, took its time stalking me. This was everything I ever needed to know about Fate" (p.82). She describes her treatment as something that had been doomed upon her, and adds negative connotation to her Fate in general. She implies that the future holds similar pain and suffering: pain and suffering that is out of her hands, but rather in the hands of Fate. Towards the end of the book, Lucy speaks of her Fate, "I considered the idea that what God wanted from me was to keep trying and trying and trying, no matter how difficult it was. My goal, and my intended reward, was to understand" (p.100). These powerful words suggest a maturation of Lucy's character as she learns to accept her fate having cancer and now concentrates on how she can gain from this experience and that there is a great, optimistic plan that Fate has for her.

Autobiography of a Face is a remarkable memoir that can easily be compared to Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life and Mary Karr's Liar's Club, by being an already powerful story that is enhanced by the author's masterful use of sensory details, powerful dialogue and reoccurring symbolic themes. I strongly recommend this book to readers as a book in which tragedy and sadness reign, but also as a book that illustrates quirky humor.