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Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Medical Memoir



Medical memoir are a popular subgenre of memoir. These memoirs often explore the psychological aspects of chronic illness. 

Some explore mental illness or neurological disorders like Susannah Cahalan's Brain on Fire and some explore mystery illnesses. For instance, Sarah Ramey's The Lady's Handbook For Her Mysterious Illness explores a woman's attempt to identify her mystery ailment.

For patients suffering similar symptoms, these memoirs can be comforting. Memoirists put into words the same fears and worries that all patients have and, thus, can be powerful. 


Cahalan, Susannah. Brain on Fire.

O'Brien, Meredith. Uncomfortably Numb: A Memoir.

Olstein, Lisa. Pain Studies.

Ramey, Sarah. The Lady's Handbook For Her Mysterious Illness. 

Robinson, John Elder. Look Me In The Eye.

Robinson, John Elder. Switched on: a Memoir of Brain Change

A subgenre of graphic novels, graphic medical novels, also deal with medical topics. Personal in nature, these can provide solace as well.

Saturday, June 6, 2020

Cornelia Funke's Inkheart Trilogy

The Inkheart Trilogy celebrates the power of readers and writers. So its fitting that Fenoglio who finds himself stuck in Inkworld needs a reader to read him out of his own story. He wishes he could write a different ending.

"I could write one, here and now, and change everything, if only I have someone to read it aloud! Of course he had looked for another Silvertongue but in vain. No Meggie, no Mortimer, not even someone like that man Darius..."

Whenever someone is read into a story, someone or something else is sent out in return. That seems to be the price of the magic spell that works to bring someone out of one world and into the next. When Meggie, Farid and Gwin went into Inkworld, three fire elves came out. 

Fenoglio does not seem to think about the ethics of this; he wants out of Inkworld where the villains he created "ruled...after their own fashion."

Review of Cornelia Funke's Inkheart, the first in the Inkheart Trilogy



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