Unraveling the Dark Comedy of Mortality: Why Annabelle Gurwitch’s New Memoir Will Change How You See Life and Death
Diagnosis, “haggling with insurance,” and immediate side-effects of the biomarker targeted therapy (“little paper cuts on fingertips and nail beds”), all take a toll, but she can’t help wax poetic about the etymology of Fatigue, which for her, thanks to the phrase “Je suis très fatiguée” she learned in middle school, “conjured an image of loucheness” and reminded her of Ophelia, “fetching,” even in death.
She chronicles the “calamity of kindness” from friends, who gift her with a slanket (blanket with sleeves), offer to launch a GoFundMe campaign, and rope her in for a supporting role in a Michael Bay movie. She starts dating a former music executive, Jeremy, with his “rakish, Daniel Craig-ish good looks,” and whose accent—a mix of “imperious British lilt tempered by the salt-of-the-earth sturdy twang”—she describes with meticulous, almost poetic detail. It’s these delicious digressions that make her memoir what it is—vulnerable, intimate, and exuding a best friend’s warmth. They also show that life is what you make of it, cancer or not.
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