REVIEWED BY JUDITH NEWMAN
CRITIC'S CHOICE
MEMOIR
The great thing about writing a cancer memoir in graphic form? Not only can you talk about your cancer, but your cancer can talk back. In this smart, funny chronicle, Marchetto's cancer cells, drawn like delinquent happy faces, stick out their tongues and flip her the bird.
In 2004, Marchetto, 43, is a sharp-witted cartoonist who gives more thought to hair and shoes than to her health insurance, which she's let lapse. Newly engaged, she is stunned to learn that a pearl-sized breast lump is malignant. Full of wisdom and anger, her story reveals how, through a lumpectomy, chemo and radiation, she learns what's really important: friends, family, her adorable husband. Or, as she asks in one panel, "... [W]hat does 29 Needles + 18 pounds + 15 radiation technicians + 11 Medical assistants + 9 Nurses + 8 Doctors + $192,720.04 + 2 Rabbis + 1 Priest =?" Answer: "... An Experience That Has Changed Me Forever."
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