Rating: Summary: Pretty Good Book with a Great Lesson Review: This Book shows how hard it is to overcome such a horrible thing as having cancer. My only bad comment for this book is that it gets annoying at times that the author seems to have a bit of an ego, however, she's been through a lot so its understandable. Lucy Grealy had cancer in her face that eventually led to having half of her chin removed. The reader feels the horror of the pain that she had to go through, especially in chemotherapy. In addition, Lucy had to face the rudeness and ignorance of other people. This book is very touching, and very interesting.
Rating: Summary: Inspirational Review: Lucy Grealy will be missed, she successfuly drove me - and I believe every reader - thouroughly into her journey of self recognition, sharing her feelings and thoughts through out her journey of multiple treatments and surgeries. Do you feel bad about your life, your looks, or someone you love is having a hard life, read this book, you'll learn a lot from this fragile lady. the news of her leaving our world made me sad hoping she rests in peace.
Rating: Summary: Often disturbing, yet inspiring read Review: This book was quite disturbing to me, yet I have to say it was well written, I had a hard time putting it down, despite the discomfort it produced, and it inspired me greatly. The content was difficult...the mere thought of a child so young having to go through such an experience was hard for me to read, yet her style was wonderful....and I found myself cheering her on. I can't imagine the emotional pain, not to mention the physical pain she has experienced in her life and it's interesting to see what such pain will do to a person's personality and spirit.
Rating: Summary: Brilliant Anatomy of an Inferiority Complex Review: As a child Lucy Grealy suffered several surgeries to remove cancer from her jaw, leaving her face violated and disfigured. What we then learn is how a brilliant, sometimes acerbic young girl evolves and fights for wisdom while enduring an inferiority complex and all its discontents: exaggerated sense of defects, unforgiving self-consciousness, distorted self-image, alientation, loneliness, and compulsive attempts to transcend and overcome her sense of inferiority. The victory of this book is the tone, witty, insightful, and never self-pitying.
Rating: Summary: what exactly is the point? Review: we were forced to read this book in school. i disliked it. you may find it odd that i gave it four stars when i didsliked it, but tough. it was well written, and it really got you thinking. however, many things were vague and hard to understand. although a wonderful veiw of what it is like to grow up with a disfigured face and a disfunctional family, this book needs some work.
Rating: Summary: tell me something i didnt learn in chapter 1 Review: While Grealy showed superior grammar and vocabulary in this book, she lacked a positive attitude. I found this book extremely sorrowful and drowning in self-pity. I dont mean to sound harsh, and I am very grateful that I have not contracted this disease, but I found it rather pig-headed of her to write with such detail about her appearance when she had a 5% chance of living with this disease- and she lived. I took no pleasure in reading something 240 pages long that talked only about how ugly she was and how terrible her life was, because in all honesty, things could have been a lot worse.
Rating: Summary: Autobiography of a face Review: Autobiography of a face is a true story about Lucy Grealy, the author. She tells her story of having cancer and how she had to live with a distorted self-image for more than twenty years and have over thirty reconstructive surgeries before she could come to terms with herself. She developed a fear of never being loved at some point but gratefully she learned to define herself from inside out. She realizes that beauty is found deep within. I felt this was a very easy book to read. The language wasn't too big and it was easy to follow. If you like true stories about real people then you will like this book. Lucy Grealy is a very good writer. I feel she is a very strong person for not giving up on herself and I'm glad she made something of her life. I really liked this book.
Rating: Summary: The best true story I've ever read Review: I think about this book nearly every day, even though I read it several years ago. It has had a profound impact on my own life. It is a real-life story about a young girl growing up with jaw bone cancer and having to live with multiple surgeries and radiation to try to rid her jaw of cancer. During and after the disfiguring surgeries and radiation, she has difficulties adjusting to society's taunts and stares, beginning with her schoolmates and continuing with adults. There is no ugly duckling to beautiful swan transformation. It's just one girl trying to survive cancer and make it through a difficult life in this beauty obsessed world. This book is a must read for anyone who feels that their appearance makes them unacceptable. It is a story of great personal fortitude coming from a little girl whose family just isn't capable of dealing with the cancer and the emotional pain she must endure.
Rating: Summary: "Macabre Status" Review: Although critically acclaimed, I cannot recommend this memoir. First, the book's overriding focus is the author, who so makes her face her life - "this singularity of meaning" - that the life ceases to be. Hence, the autobiography of Lucy Grealy is the autobiography of her face; the book lacks the range of varied subjects that characterizes appreciable prose.Second, the events recited are done without due attention to the reader; the book plays throughout to an audience of one - an experience more at catharsis than literary achievement (Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes succeeds at both.) Ergo, Grealy could have been more selective in her choice of major surgeries; why couldn't they simply have been summed up briefly and the themes therein given length and detail? And why doesn't Grealy introduce persons other than herself? Autobiography of a Face contains no action or romance; rather, it is limited outlook, save for the protracted cancer surgery, on an ordinary, unexceptional life. As the history progresses Grealy becomes feebly philosophical and superficially psychological; her introspection, as with life being "one [day] in front of the other," is the most part one continuous cliche. No Emerson, Grealy is a sermonizer. The writing evinces a poetic style, e.g., adjectival emphasis, which makes the reading easy but erratic in a narrative. Yet, promptly, Grealy tells us that "[m]y pleasure . . . didn't last long," thereby commencing her tiresome self-pity. The result is disconsolateness, and in the end the reader is left still viewing Lucy Grealy as she once did herself, having let her deformity curtail her identity that she becomes Case 3, Figure 6-A.
Rating: Summary: Amazing! Review: This is a great book for anyone who has struggled with their appearance in a world full of beautiful people. A must-read!!!
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