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Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person: A Memoir in Comics
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Customer Reviews
Rating:  - She got it right
As a recovered (so far) cancer patient, I found myself laughing out loud at Miriam's amazingly right-on takes about the emotional roller coaster ride of cancer. It's hard to be told how "brave" and "noble" one is when all we are doing is trying to survive.
I immediately went online to check anything else by Miriam Engelberg, and was saddened to learn of her death two years ago. I felt I'd lost a close friend.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is going through treatment. It affirms the freedom to be just yourself even in a time of crisis.
Rating:  - Not so Shallow for a Shallow Person
Miriam articulates well what many of us with cancer want to say or at least think.The comics had the end printed on the last frame which made it really nice to read just a few strips or several at a time. My favorites are: Every thing is my Enemy, Nausea, and the Cheerful Tech.This is a fun read for those enlightened cancer patients who don't take it all so seriously. If you have had, or have the big C, you have to chuckle over some of these comics. Great recommendation for family members too while they are waiting with you during chemo.I wish Miriam, my little grass hopper, positive thoughts
Rating:  - Definitely not upbeat
In spite of its semi-witty title, and being written in cartoon style, this is not a funny book. The author is very honest, sometimes painfully so, about her reactions to being told she has cancer, how having it affects her relationships with the people in her life, her experience with her treatments, and her thoughts on having cancer in general
The way she copes is to permenently plant herself in front of the television and become obsessed with TV Guide crossword puzzles. Her utimate conclusion is that knowing you are going to die takes all meaning out of life. Memories and past accomplishements are empty of significance, and there is no point in incurring new experiences.
What, she was planning on living for ever? We are all going to die someday and we, some of us, anyway, are bound and determined to make the most of the life we have. As a cancer survivor (so far) myself, I do not recommend this book to anybody looking for humor, hope or cheer.
Rating: - True, funny because it's.
I love this book and have read it over and over while going through an illness (not breast cancer). I like the episodic style, which eliminates the tedious exposition that annoys me in some memoirs and which makes every page worth re-reading. Despite the anecdotal structure, I felt by the end of the book that I had a very full picture of the narrator due to her honesty and her use of recurring themes throughout the book.
One idea that I appreciate is the book's discussion of cartooning as a "spiritual practice." It enhances my understanding of the book itself, and also I find the concept of a wide variety of spiritual practices (meditation, music, cartooning) interesting because I have the same difficulty with traditional meditation that Ms. Engelberg describes in her comics on "Stress" and "Spirituality."
Despite its unhappy ending, I find the book not only funny but also comforting in providing reassurance that I'm not the only one who worries about whether I'm doing a "good job" of being ill, etc. Perhaps the book actually works particularly well for me because I can relate to the narrator's reaction/approach to illness and yet the specific challenges of breast cancer don't hit me too close to home. The book resonates with my approach to difficulties at work and in my personal life as well as in health issues, and I would expect it to appeal to a much larger audience than those looking for writings about breast cancer.
In addition to being a good read, the book has a good collection of breast cancer support resources at the end.
Rating:  - Meh.
Miriam Engleberg, Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person: A Memoir in Comics (Harper, 2006)
The late Miriam Engleberg released a book of cartoons (the subtitle is "a memoir in comics," though whether this is really a memoir is probably arguable; it's more a collection of sketches) not too long before her death that offer a frank, sometimes frustrating look at life with cancer. I read it about a week ago, and have been trying to come up with a review of it ever since. Time has not made it any easier for me to find something to say about this book; it just is. This is normally the bit where I'd be throwing around phrases like "profound insight" and "raw, but energetic, drawing," but none of them came to mind while I was reading it, and haven't since. I'm not saying it's a bad book, really--it's certainly miles and years better than Cancer Vixen or, lord help us, Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy--but it's not a book that really seems to open up all that much. Perhaps this is a function of the book's fragmentary style; in an actual memoir, much as I despise the things most of the time, you have enough room to get to know the main character as more than just a sketch. (Persepolis is a fantastic example of this, of course.) That never happens here; it's as if Engleberg tried to make the cancer experience universal by shying away from the personal. Not the personal details, mind you, but perceptions, thoughts, etc. that aren't common to those not suffering cancer. Nothing Engleberg reveals of her thoughts and feelings here isn't suffered on a fairly regular basis by anyone with mild neurosis--which is, when it comes right down to it, most of us. If that was the goal, it's a noble attempt, but it comes off shallow in its universality.
I continue my search for a cancer memoir that's half as good as Robert Weinberg's One Renegade Cell, and fruitlessly, but of the cancer memoirs I've read, this is by far the best of them. ** ½
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