The Two Kinds of Decay
by Sarah Manguso
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008
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New York Times Sunday Book Review Editors' Choice
New York Post Required Reading
San Francisco Chronicle 100 Best Books of 2008
Time Out Chicago Top 10 Books of 2008
Edward Champion's Top 10 Books of 2008
Largehearted Boy's 11 Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2008
Readings (Australia) Best Books of 2008
Rights sold in Australia to Hunter Publishers
Rights sold in Taiwan to JC Culture & Publishing
Rights sold in Germany to Lux Books
ABOUT THE BOOK
A memoir of the autoimmune disease that tore through the author's twenties, a decade of recurrent
paralysis, collapsed veins, chest catheters, the deaths of friends and strangers, addiction, depression, and
the trite metaphors that accompany prolonged illness. A book of tremendous grace and self-awareness, The Two Kinds of Decay
transcends the very notion of what an illness story can and should be.
REVIEWS
As much as anything, this book is a search for adequate descriptions of things heretofore unnamed
and unknown. Manguso concludes her account with questions—and an exhortation to the reader to
pay attention. Through her own attentiveness, Manguso has produced a remarkable, clear-eyed
account that turns horror into something humane and beautiful.
Emily Mitchell, The New York Times Sunday Book Review
A spare, impressionistic account of illness and recovery. She got very ill,
and then she got well again. But that process was arduous and took seven years; Manguso evokes it with
captivating detail, without self-pity, and with humor and precision. A beautiful book.
Richard Rayner, The Los Angeles Times
Hers is not a day-by-day description of this grueling time, but an impressionistic text filled
with bright, poetic flashes. Many sick people learn to live in the moment, but the power of Manguso's
writing makes that truism revelatory.
Juliet Wittman, The Washington Post Book World
Her slender volume is written in a sparse, no-nonsense style that can be chilling but make
you cheer for the author.
Billy Heller, The New York Post
Contrary to the usual cliché, illness did not make Manguso a better person. It made her a more
thoughtful, self-aware person. In simple, unsentimental language, she describes her initial symptoms,
her sudden attacks, her treatments, her suicidal depression, and her progress as a patient and,
incidentally, as a person.
Barbara Fisher, The Boston Globe
Manguso is unflinching and never maudlin as she describes with dark humor the many humiliations of the disease.
Her lessons are hard won and offer much hope in this powerful and moving memoir.
Vanessa Hua, The San Francisco Chronicle
Stunning... Manguso's deadpan tone works equally well in service of the painful and funny moments,
or when the two meet.
Jonathan Messinger, Time Out Chicago
Manguso's chilling memoir about suffering and recovering from a paralyzing neurological disease rises
far above the standard fare.
Vikas Turakhia, The Plain Dealer
Manguso pushes beyond the familiar confrontation between doctor and patient to explore the
linguistic confusion at the heart of the power struggle.
Amanda Fortini, Slate
With spare, precise prose, gallows humor, and piercing observation, Manguso seizes and artfully organizes
shards of memories of paralysis, breathlessness, extreme pain, and terror ... an indelible meditation.
Kera Bolonik, Barnes & Noble Spotlight
Does a purse snatcher sit on a bench reading the latest Sarah Manguso book? Do you think that
when inmates go to the prison library, they ask for Sarah Manguso? I doubt it.
Garrison Keillor, Salon
In brief, almost stanza-like paragraphs, Manguso describes ... the chronic fear of death—the sort
of details sufferers wish to share and readers read such accounts to learn.
Diane Johnson, The New York Review of Books
Manguso writes this account from the far end of the illness, looking back on it from a position
of physical strength, biting ferocity, and unsentimental wit.
Wendy Lesser, Bookforum
This is not a "rah-rah" survivor story, but a brutal tale told with black humor about Manguso's
refusal to capitulate to a devastating disease. It is a story about infected chest tubes, experimental
drug protocols, sex as a lifesaving measure, and a fierce woman coming back from an absolute physical
collapse.
Dylan Foley, The New Jersey Star-Ledger
Manguso picks away at her memories using sharp, poetic prose and neat, chewable paragraphs
as bits and pieces of her past come into focus on the page. Congratulations, Sarah Manguso,
for writing the first memoir that made me sweat. A lot.
Chuck Adams, Eugene Weekly
What makes this lightning-quick book extraordinary is not just Manguso's
deadpan delivery of often unthinkable details, nor her poet's struggle with the damaging metaphors
of disease, but the compassion she acquires as she comes to understand her pain in relation to
the pain of others.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
An impressive display of inquisitive memory, a treatise on being young and sick
and a testament to the importance of truly paying attention.
Nate Martin, Stop Smiling Magazine
The just knock-you-on-your-ass part about Manguso's writing is how unbelievably scrubbed
and tough the words are. There's no self-pity in the whole book...
it's hard to even comprehend the feat of mental strength that'd require.
Weston Cutter, Corduroy Books
ADVANCE PRAISE
If art can be described as the path one takes toward some form of compassion,
this distilled and luminous book offers us one such map. An exploration of a body
at a particular moment in its history, narrated by an unsparing yet appealing consciousness,
The Two Kinds of Decay brings the reader to a place of grace and compassion
that is absolutely breathtaking.
Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City
One of the most movingly humane books
I have read in a long time; it is a hard-earned vision of life, every word
grounded in both body and soul.
John Burnham Schwartz, author of The Commoner
At the white-hot center of this book burns the intelligence and wit
of Sarah Manguso. With a poet's brevity,
with riveting narrative energy, with searing insight and compassion,
Manguso leads us into hell and back again.
Julie Orringer, author of How to Breathe Underwater
In The Two Kinds of Decay, Manguso has miraculously elevated
the act of memory. She has found honesty, fear, longing, and beauty in every
moment of her young life, giving this book an intensity found nowhere else. You
put it down panting with wonder and grief, but never with pity. A breakthrough
in the memoir, and in writing.
Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Story of a Marriage
