Autobiography of a Face [Thirtieth Anniversary Edition] - by Lucy Grealy (Paperback)

About the Book

"Thirty years ago, Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face launched the young writer into the top echelons of contemporary literature, winning her both acclaim and fame. An incandescent tale of perseverance, humor, and deep introspection in the face of emotional and physical pain, her powerful memoir--as evocative and resonant today as it was in 1994--speaks to us across time. At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a potentially terminal cancer, undergoing years of chemotherapy that destroyed a third of her jawbone. When she eventually returned to school, she faced the cruel taunts of classmates. It took her twenty years of living with a distorted self-image and more than thirty years of reconstructive procedures before she began to come to terms with her appearance. This beautiful and timeless memoir is a tale of great suffering and remarkable strength told without sentimentality and with considerable wit. Grealy reflects on how cancer transformed her face and her life, and captures what it was like as a child and a young adult to be torn between wanting to be loved for who we are and desperately wishing to be perfect."--

Book Synopsis

"So many memoirs make you feel that you've been sealed up inside a wall with a monomaniac. A really good one, like Autobiography of a Face, makes you feel there is more to ask and learn. You are not just seeing the writer; you are not trying to see yourself. You are seeing the world in a different way."--Margo Jefferson

Foreword by Suleika Jaouad, author of the New York Times bestseller Between Two Kingdoms

A thirtieth-anniversary edition of Lucy Grealy's celebrated memoir, a timeless exploration of identity, loneliness, the nature of beauty, and strength.

Thirty years ago, Lucy Grealy's Autobiography of a Face launched the young writer into the top echelons of contemporary literature, winning her both acclaim and fame. An incandescent tale of perseverance, humor, and deep introspection in the face of emotional and physical pain, her powerful memoir--as evocative and resonant today as it was in 1994--speaks to us across time.

At age nine, Lucy Grealy was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a potentially terminal cancer, undergoing years of chemotherapy that destroyed a third of her jawbone. When she eventually returned to school, she faced the cruel taunts of classmates. It took her twenty years of living with a distorted self-image and more than thirty years of reconstructive procedures before she began to come to terms with her appearance.

This beautiful and timeless memoir is a tale of great suffering and remarkable strength told without sentimentality and with considerable wit. Grealy reflects on how cancer transformed her face and her life, and captures what it was like as a child and a young adult to be torn between wanting to be loved for who we are and desperately wishing to be perfect.

Review Quotes

"Stunning. . . . Insightful and exquisitely written, this book reminds us that the things that make us 'beautiful' are not always the things that other people see." -- Seventeen

"Grealy has turned her misfortune into a book that is engaging and engrossing, a story of grace as well as cruelty, and a demonstration of her own wit and style and class." -- Washington Post Book World

"Despite its unblinking stare at an excruciatingly painful subject, this is not a dour book. Autobiography of a Face is a book about image, about the tyranny of the image of a beautiful--or even pleasingly average--face. In the end, this tyranny is not so much overthrown as shrugged off." -- New York Times Book Review

"Written in a voice that is both compelling and insightful, Autobiography of a Face seems to mirror back to readers something relevant to their own lives. . . . Despite the singular nature of her experience, Lucy Grealy manages to convince an amazing array of people that she is speaking directly to them." -- Baltimore Sun

"Wit, intelligence, and an unconquerable spirit. . . shine through this remarkable book." -- Mademoiselle

"Though Grealy's experience was extraordinary, it is utterly affecting, for there is no one who has not felt the shame and self-doubt of physical inadequacy." -- Elle

"With fairy tale logic, as though to make up for her nearly unbearable fate, the gods also gave this young woman extraordinary gifts of perception and language. It is impossible to read Autobiography of a Face without having your consciousness raised forever." -- Mirabella

"This poet's ability to harness the pathos while transmuting her personal anguish into universal truths has enabled her to forge a powerful testament to the triumph of the human spirit." -- Detroit Free Press

"[A] book that shares what it's like to be really different from other people. . . With exquisite prose and steely strength." -- USA Today

"A memoir of great beauty. In her intensely elegant prose, Lucy Grealy describes the loneliness of pain, the confusion of childhood, the slow shock of her disfigured face with an exquisite unblinking intelligence that is both gracious and, improbably, filled with joy. I love this book." -- Cathleen Schine, author of The Three Weissmanns of Westport

"Autobiography of a Face is about that most wrenching of subjects - a child's suffering - but also moral courage, the hard battle of growing up and the unfolding of a writer's soul. An honest, deeply moving book." -- Eva Hoffman, author of Lost in Translation

"This harrowing, lyrical memoir is a striking meditation on the distorting effects of our culture's preoccupation with physical beauty." -- Publishers Weekly (starred)

"A memoir of disquieting candor and power. The account of Grealy's arduous coming of age is both haunting and inspirational." -- Ploughshares

"An unsentimental, honest, unflinching look at a single visage reflected (or distorted) in an unforgiving cultural mirror." -- Kirkus

"Grealy's is a book you want to hand people and say only 'Read it.'" -- Booklist

"So many memoirs make you feel that you've been sealed up inside a wall with a monomaniac. A really good one, like 'Autobiography of a Face, ' makes you feel there is more to ask and learn. You are not just seeing a writer; you are not trying to see yourself. You are seeing the world in a different way." -- Margo Jefferson