One Body: A Retrospective

Scottish journalist Simpson (When I Had a Younger Sister) movingly recounts her experience with breast cancer in this exquisite memoir. In 2018, 54-year-old Simpson visited her doctor for what she thought would be a routine mammogram, but walked out with a cancer diagnosis (which the author believes was due to hormone replacement treatment). “The cells in my right breast had turned against me,” Simpson writes, “I was entering another era in the history of my body.” Though Simpson and her husband were shocked by the news, they quickly adjusted to their new reality, and despite her diagnosis, Simpson refused to succumb to despair. In prose by turns witty and frank, Simpson revisits her inner and outer struggles—from the physical effects of radiotherapy to the fear of her own adult daughters one day receiving a similar prognosis—along her path to recovery. Reflecting on joining a creative writing group with others who shared her experience, Simpson affectingly muses on the paradoxical relief of entering remission: “I got stabs of both imposter syndrome (was my cancer bad enough?) and survivor guilt (why was I lucky enough to escape chemo?).” It’s this candor that makes Simpson’s narrative shine, providing a beacon of light and hope for readers who’ve been impacted by illness. In a sea of cancer memoirs, this stands out. (Sept.)