Dimensions
137 x 206 x 21mm
At 21, the poet Sarah Manguso developed a neurological disease so rare it didn’t even have a
real name. A wildly unpredictable disease that appeared suddenly and tore through her twenties, vanishing and
then returning, paralysing her for weeks at a time, programming her first to expect nothing from life and then,
furiously, to expect everything.
In this captivating memoir Manguso recalls her nine-year struggle: arduous blood cleansings, collapsed veins,
multiple chest catheters, the deaths of friends and strangers, addiction, depression, and, worst of all for a writer,
the trite metaphors that accompany prolonged illness.
Ultimately, hers is not so much a chronicle of triumph or tragedy as it is simply a story about learning to pay
attention. Alternating between moments of acute sensitivity and extraordinary detachment, with grace, selfawareness
and dark humour, The Two Kinds of Decay is an unusually beautiful and moving memoir that
redefines our understanding of illness and survival.
