Summary:
This slim volume of essays written by a young woman who had
a heart transplant packs a wallop, albeit an understated one. The author, who had a congenital cardiac
anomaly that required several surgeries—the first at one day old, another five
days later, two more at the ages of two and four years—ultimately developed severe
congestive heart failure at sixteen and underwent cardiac transplantation at
the age of nineteen (none of this, by the way, is a spoiler; the introduction,
written by her sister, lays this out in detail). Eleven
years later she developed lymphoma, a side effect of the immunocompromise
induced by her anti-rejection medications, and passed away at the age of
32. This book was published
posthumously, the essays collated and edited by her sister and her friend and
colleague at the literary magazine One Story.
The essays—there are seven of them—deal with life
experiences, mostly in the form of encounters with other people, mostly
post-transplant. “I Must Have Been that
Man,” which won the Bellevue Literary Review’s Non-Fiction Prize, begins with a post-party liaison but centers
on the author’s meeting with a man in an upended wheelchair out on the street on
a rainy night; “Men Who Love Dying Women and Fishing” speculates about what
might attract a man to a woman with a terminal illness; “Your Heart, Your Scars,
Zombies” offers a novel take on the idea of a zombie occupying a liminal space
between the living and the dead and analogizes that to the situation of the
post-transplant patient; “Thank God for the Nights That Go Right” speaks to the
serendipity—or Higher Power?—that seems to guide our experiences. They
range over the timeline; one recounts a pre-transplant trip with other ill
children to San Diego, others come from later in the author’s life. There is no linear temporal progression to
the essays; rather, one gets the impression that they are simply being
remembered spontaneously. Nonetheless, a
clear personal narrative emerges.
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