The Two Kinds of Decay

 

While still at college, Sarah Manguso caught what she thought was a head cold. A member of a choir with a solo in an upcoming concert, she fought it off with “tea and herbal lozenges” until after the concert when she “prepared to let the head cold run its course.” A few months later, having become increasingly tired and unsteady at college, (“I was more concerned I looked drunk. I was staggering around, even to and from breakfast”), she was diagnosed with a rare neurological condition called CIDP, similar to but more aggressive than Guillain-Barré Syndrome. Written after seven years of remission, The Two Kinds of Decay is Manguso’s memoir of the five years she spent suffering from the disease. Told in anecdotal fragments, her narrative reflects the unpredictable patterns of memory and the uncertainty of chronic illness. As she negotiates the challenges of hospitalisation – tests, repeated surgeries, pharmacological side effects and scars – she puts her life in the hands of her story’s quiet heroes, a determined neurologist she calls “a Black Panther of pharmacology” and a young nurse who deals cheerfully with even the most horrific mess. Manguso’s buoyant humour and unflinching honesty make this an unforgettable memoir. [Colin Herd]