The Two Kinds of Decay

Reviews

As much as anything, this book is a search for adequate descriptions of things heretofore unnamed and unknown. Through her own attentiveness, Manguso has produced a remarkable, clear-eyed account that turns horror into something humane and beautiful.Emily Mitchell, The New York Times Sunday Book Review

A spare, impressionistic account of illness and recovery. She got very ill, and then she got well again. But that process was arduous and took seven years; Manguso evokes it with captivating detail, without self-pity, and with humor and precision. A beautiful book.Richard Rayner, The Los Angeles Times

Hers is not a day-by-day description of this grueling time, but an impressionistic text filled with bright, poetic flashes. Many sick people learn to live in the moment, but the power of Manguso’s writing makes that truism revelatory.Juliet Wittman, The Washington Post Book World

Her slender volume is written in a sparse, no-nonsense style that can be chilling but make you cheer for the author.Billy Heller, The New York Post

This harrowing memoir describes a surreal life as it is consumed for several years by ghastly medical procedures. Manguso is a poet, but she spurns gauzy metaphors for sharp, vivid, sometimes funny storytelling.Lionel Shriver, The Wall Street Journal

Sarah Manguso’s finely crafted story of the fiendish disease that repeatedly brought her close to death and insanity is both terrifying and remarkably acute. A rare and remarkable book.Staff, The London Times

Manguso’s prose is spare, striking; her intellect shines brightly and wickedly. She has a sharp eye for both the laudable and the paternalistic in medicine. Her honest, insightful and stark memory album of a life on the edge of death is an unusually piercing one.Leyla Sanai, The London Independent

The chapter entitled “Measuring” is a three-page essay which could give any professional philosopher a run for their money: and I wouldn’t mind betting that her description of how it feels to be paralysed will become a classic reference point, not just in medicine but in popular culture.Arminta Wallace, The Irish Times

Contrary to the usual cliche, illness did not make Manguso a better person. It made her a more thoughtful, self-aware person.Barbara Fisher, The Boston Globe

Manguso is unflinching and never maudlin as she describes with dark humor the many humiliations of the disease. Her lessons are hard won and offer much hope in this powerful and moving memoir.Vanessa Hua, The San Francisco Chronicle

Stunning. Manguso’s deadpan tone works equally well in service of the painful and funny moments, or when the two meet.Jonathan Messinger, Time Out Chicago

Manguso’s chilling memoir about suffering and recovering from a paralyzing neurological disease rises far above the standard fare.Vikas Turakhia, The Plain Dealer

Manguso pushes beyond the familiar confrontation between doctor and patient to explore the linguistic confusion at the heart of the power struggle.Amanda Fortini, Slate

With spare, precise prose, gallows humor, and piercing observation, Manguso seizes and artfully organizes shards of memories of paralysis, breathlessness, extreme pain, and terror. An indelible meditation.Kera Bolonik, Barnes & Noble Spotlight

Does a purse snatcher sit on a bench reading the latest Sarah Manguso book? Do you think that when inmates go to the prison library, they ask for Sarah Manguso? I doubt it.Garrison Keillor, Salon

In brief, almost stanza-like paragraphs, Manguso describes the chronic fear of death-the sort of details sufferers wish to share and readers read such accounts to learn.Diane Johnson, The New York Review of Books

Manguso writes this account from the far end of the illness, looking back on it from a position of physical strength, biting ferocity, and unsentimental wit.Wendy Lesser, Bookforum

This is a brutal tale told with black humor about Manguso’s refusal to capitulate to a devastating disease. It is a story about infected chest tubes, experimental drug protocols, sex as a lifesaving measure, and a fierce woman coming back from an absolute physical collapse.Dylan Foley, The New Jersey Star-Ledger

Manguso picks away at her memories using sharp, poetic prose and neat, chewable paragraphs as bits and pieces of her past come into focus on the page. Congratulations, Sarah Manguso, for writing the first memoir that made me sweat. A lot.Chuck Adams, Eugene Weekly

What makes this lightning-quick book extraordinary is not just Manguso’s deadpan delivery of often unthinkable details, nor her poet’s struggle with the metaphors of disease, but the compassion she acquires as she comes to understand her pain in relation to the pain of others.Publishers Weekly (starred review)

An impressive display of inquisitive memory, a treatise on being young and sick and a testament to the importance of truly paying attention.Nate Martin, Stop Smiling Magazine

The just knock-you-on-your-ass part about Manguso’s writing is how unbelievably scrubbed and tough the words are. There’s no self-pity in the whole book. It’s hard to even comprehend the feat of mental strength that’d require.Weston Cutter, Corduroy Books