Lopsided: How Having Breast Cancer Can Be Really Distracting

by Meredith Norton Narrated by Carrington MacDuffie

Overview

Lopsided is not your ordinary cancer memoir.

Meredith Norton displays the razor-sharp wit of a masterful humorist as she chronicles her experience, from the first appearance of her bizarre symptoms while she was living in Paris to moving to California to live with her compulsive parents and their five television sets.

Along with hilarious and harrowing portrait of her treatments, she offers equally amusing memories of her offbeat life, rants about well-meaning family and friends, and rails against self-pity.

Funny, irreverent, and down-to-earth, Norton's memoir brings a refreshing burst of attitude to a difficult experience she refuses to be intimidated by.

Editorial Reviews

Nora Krug

In the burgeoning genre of the cancer memoir, Norton's contribution is exceptional. As she chronicles the harrowing details of her treatment, Norton is witty and bracingly unsentimental.
—The Washington Post

Kirkus Reviews

Blackly humorous debut memoir about surviving cancer. An African-American married to a Frenchman and living in Paris, Norton was misdiagnosed by four French doctors before learning during a visit to her parents in California that she had inflammatory breast cancer. Over the course of the next 20 months, she underwent chemotherapy and suffered the attendant baldness, hot flashes, rashes and fatigue; then she had a mastectomy, a course of radiation and more chemotherapy. Into the gut-wrenching details of these treatments, the feisty author splices a kaleidoscope of delightful anecdotes: growing up in an affluent family under the scrutiny of an intellectually demanding father; sharing a treehouse with a novice taxidermist after college; her misadventures as a public schoolteacher; the stresses of life in Paris as a young wife and mother of a toddler. She also includes a scene in Tangier, where she blocked her dentist's attempt to pull out her broken front teeth and then filed down the jagged edges herself. Norton is one plucky dame, and she displays a sharp eye for the human condition. Her challenging, awkward encounters-with doctors, nurses, even with well-meaning but clueless sympathizers-all have the ring of truth. Rejecting the model of super-survivor Lance Armstrong with his "excessive drive and talent," the author indulged in Krispy Kreme donuts, counted on friends and family to pull her through and took long naps. When she was sick, she was very sick, and she leaves no doubt about how awful her experience was. Norton calls herself a storyteller, and the tale she has crafted from a life-altering event is indeed hard to put down. Agent: David Halpern/The Robbins Office

People

Her disarming frankness renders the book less a cancer survival guide and more a lovably unfiltered e-mail from a hilarious friend.”

The Oprah Magazine O

A truly elegant memoir…[on] the physical slapstick of battling this disease.”

Booklist

Crackle[s] with heartfelt intensity and irreverence.”

San Francisco Chronicle

By including touches of wit and sarcasm, Norton strikes a successful balance between light and heavy, keeping her audience consistently engaged.”

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169747225
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	06/12/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged

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