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Rating: “If you think everything has been said about cancer, Engelberg will make you think again. This book is so sad, funny, and brave, honest and courageous that you won't be able to put it down.” Harriet Lerner
There are events in a person's life that represent a sort of zenith point of no return. An emotionally "strong" event like the sudden loss of a close relative, an accident, a job dismissal, or other events can mean something so important that “life can no longer be the same as before.”
Whether we like it or not.
Miriam Engelberg had a husband, two wonderful children, and a job that completely satisfied her. At 43, however, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Faced with such a shocking fact, everyone can react in a thousand different ways, such as falling into depression or blindly trusting medical treatments, hanging on the words of their doctor.
Miriam decided to react by writing this “Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person” (Tea Editions) a kind of “comic diary” of this dark period, striving to approach the matter with that slight detachment that allows her to be more objective about the topic and afford the luxury of smiling (even) about certain situations that have very little comic.
And it's precisely the contrast between the drama and the comedy of some Woody Allen-like passages that make this read truly irresistible.
With elementary drawing (almost childlike and innocent at the same time), the journey begins with the news received, doubts about the accuracy of the images, the initial fragmented radiotherapy treatments, to the typical female “problems” of choosing a wig (to hide the baldness due to chemotherapy), nausea, sex with a partner who sees her as a “sick person”, and relatives who pity her, continuing throughout the entire process that one can well imagine.
All mercilessly described with an unsettling clarity, as it makes us a part of every doubt or crisis she has (talking about God, the children who will soon be orphans, and the temptation of suicide).
One thinks, laughs, suffers, and despairs for the great sensitivity that a comic of this type manages to communicate, in a disarming and true way.
The author will say, before dying in October 2006: “I think of my book as a text that talks about life, illness, and death, and I believe the humor path is what makes it easier and human.” Words of wisdom.
I'm sorry that many are prejudiced against “comics” in general, but such books (yes, you read it right “BOOKS”) are truly reductive to define as “simple comics.”
Read to believe.
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