Book #53: The Middle Place

Title: The Middle Place
Author: Kelly Corrigan

Honestly, I still have a chapter or two left before I'm done with The Middle Place, but I'm writing the review based on the 200+ pages I have read. Kelly Corrigan writes the story of her struggle with breast cancer, which happens to coincide with her much-beloved father's diagnosis with kidney cancer. But it's also a story about couplehood and parenthood (Corrigan's girls are 3 and 1 when she's diagnosed). And yeah, she readily admits that she's the kind of person who loves the limelight, but she's so darn funny that you don't get annoyed by it (a trait she seems to have inherited from her father).

Case in point: I read this last night, and laughed so hard that Eddie came in from the other room to find out what was wrong. I tried to read it to him, but got all choked up and spat out the words in between guffaws, which didn't help the punch line much. She's writing about preparing for a trip with friends to Mexico to celebrate the end of her treatments and says, "Our travel bags get fatter and fatter-- filled with stuffed animals and books and rows of diapers, like all we're gonna do when we get there is lie in bed-- snuggling, reading, and peeing." I'm laughing right now as I type. And her description of male genitalia (p. 91) had me in stitches too. It's not the great American novel, or even the great American memoir, by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a fun book, if a story about nearly dying can be called fun.