Rewriting Illness

Rewriting Illness Elizabeth Benedict’s eighth book, will mess with you — in irresistible ways. Despite its scary subject, this chronicle reads more like a breathtaking whodunnit — or rather, a whatdunnit... Best of all, Benedict’s writing sparkles.... Benedict whips language around like a gunslinger.... For all its roller-coaster terrors, Benedict’s story … amuses and entertains, even while we’re clutching the book pop-eyed.... Benedict’s fearless descriptions of how every step (and misstep) felt, are mesmerizing.... Give it to friends. It’s supremely worth the journey.” Boston Globe

"A New York City cancer memoir informed by Susan Sontag and Nora Ephron.... A fine antidote to anodyne cancer accounts. Kirkus Reviews

"Her surprisingly entertaining memoir should be required reading for every medical student, resident, and physician, prompting us to reflect on how we talk to and care for our patients – an ideal teaching tool." Kathy G. Niknejad, MD, Faculty, Harvard Medical School

"When I finished the book, I felt like I had made a new friend, and all I wanted was to keep our conversation going. This is more than a memoir; it's an experience." --Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk To Someone & co-host of the "Dear Therapists" podcast

"By turns witty, vivid, and harrowing, Rewriting Illness reads as though Nora Ephron had written a book called, ‘I Feel Bad About My Tumor.’ Especially good on the abrupt, stopped time feeling when the flow of life - city life, complicated life, sentient life - collides with illness." –Thomas Beller, Lost in the Game: A Book About Basketball.

"It's not courage unless you're afraid, and Elizabeth Benedict has courage - and fear - in abundance, in this frank, riveting and often hilarious memoir. If you've had cancer, or love someone who's had or has it, or are just plain afraid of it -- that's to say pretty much everyone -- then you'll want to read this book." ~ Claire Messud, The Emperor's Children; The Woman Upstairs

’Memoirs of serious illness are often good suspense stories, and this one is a page-turner. I read Elizabeth Benedict's Rewriting Illness in a single sitting and finished it infinitely more knowledgeable about what it means to be diagnosed with cancer. Here is someone who’s figured out not only how to think about the unthinkable but how to turn her experience into an honest, gripping, and genuinely humorous story. It’s the kind of inspiring book you want to share with all the important people in your life.” -- Sigrid Nunez, What Are You Going Through and The Friend.

"Elizabeth's Benedict's beautiful, brave memoir about her own fears, especially fear of illness, which was eventually realized and had to be overcome, has so much to say about rational and irrational anxieties and the way they haunt women and deprive us of the larger life we crave." --Katha Pollitt, Learning to Drive and Other Life Stories; Subject to Debate: Sense.

“Rewriting Illness is a superbly intelligent and surprisingly entertaining memoir about what happens when a lifelong fear of illness collides at last with illness itself. Elizabeth Benedict applies her formidable talents as a novelist to bringing to life the scenes and characters from her annus horribilis dealing with lymphoma. She writes with an honesty and a sly sense of humor about herself that make this book hard to put down.” --Stephen McCauley, author of My Ex-Life

"The moment every woman dread of finding a lump where no lump should be is the jumping off point for Elizabeth Benedict's startling, self-aware, and wickedly funny memoir. Whether she's describing her sister teaching her Tibetan chants to calm her nerves, the big city doctors who dismiss her concerns, or her problems with Susan Sontag's cancer metaphor critique, Benedict brings a novelist's deft storytelling to a narrative we think we already know. It's full of drama, humor, essential lessons for dealing with doctors, crushing vulnerability -- and wonderfully -- plenty of hope." --Mara Liasson, NPR, National Political Correspondent

"I devoured Elizabeth Benedict's beautiful book in one sitting--truly couldn’t put it down. I’m moved and astonished by how she made her cancer story universal, even for someone who is not yet, knock wood, a member of that club. Brava for this forthright and fascinating account.” -- Betsy West, documentary director (RBG, Julia, Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down)

"Nuanced, thoughtful, with not a cliché in sight, Elizabeth Benedict’s memoir is impossible to put down because the rich inner life of the writer―this excellent writer―is so compelling. The story she tells―vividly, in fits and starts, as it happened--is a reflection of encountering the unpredictable vicissitudes of life, and its one certainty."-- Katherine Dalsimer, Dept. of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, Virginia Woolf: Becoming a Writer and Female Adolescence Psychoanalytic Reflections on Literature