My career as a cancer genetic counselor both draws me to and repels me from the subject. Encountering cancer in my leisure reading, in addition to my daily work, is nothing short of exhausting. Yet, at the same time, I feel a duty to know and understand the patient’s perspective from all angles. Just as there is no single diagnostic pathway, there is no single patient story, and the outpouring of literature on the subject only exemplifies this. Breast cancer, due to its relative ubiquity in popular culture and common shared experience, takes up a large percentage of these stories: one in eight women is diagnosed in her lifetime. From Anne Boyer’s tender, atmospheric The Undying to Barbara Ehrenreich’s cynical and insightful “Welcome to Cancerland,” breast cancer accounts are increasingly more diverse and numerous with the passing years, each with their own perspective to offer survivors and the general public alike.
If there are two camps of cancer memoirs, one end being Boyer’s ornate prose and the other being Ehrenreich’s takedown of the cancer-industrial complex, S.L. Wisenberg’s The Adventures of Cancer Bitch is solidly in the latter camp in terms of tone and content alone. The book is structured as a linear diary, beginning with her initial diagnosis and ending with an epilogue showing how much time has passed. Wisenberg is snarky and matter-of-fact and calls out the same societal structures that Ehrenreich brings up, even referencing the “Welcome to Cancerland” essay a few times. However, with the expanse of memoir to fill rather than just a single essay, Wisenberg fills the gaps with herself, the person she was before diagnosis, her support system, and her existential worries. Readers are taken into the diary format and get to know the diagnostic and treatment process almost in real-time. Wisenberg nails the waiting. There is so much waiting in the world of cancer treatment. Time speeds up and slows down at will, and between procedures, there is so much space to contemplate beauty standards, strength, history, and dreams. Wisenberg seemingly tackles all of these in the waiting room of her doctor’s office. She is intensely thoughtful and shrewd in her observations. While this memoir has the benefit of hindsight to add gravitas to her observations, the reader gets the impression that her writer self is always present, not merely a matter of editorial discretion.
Leaning closer to the Boyer camp, however, are the stylistic experiments Wisenberg takes in this memoir. Several diary entries are anchored by a specific syntax choice, creating mini-essays rather than straightforward commentary. An example is “September 25: What is Mine,” where Wisenberg claims several Jewish icons as ‘hers,’ and then extends the metaphor down to animals, foods, languages, years, and so on. The exact distinctions of what belongs to her and what does not are ultimately unimportant, but the classifications themselves shed light on her feelings of belonging and aimlessness. She ends the essay with the thought that “the amoeba makes itself an arm so it can reach for what it wants,” and this connection to the body brings us back to her own post-surgical self, as well as the need to claim and possess. There are a few such essays in The Adventures of Cancer Bitch, interspersed among the diary entries, and the memoir as a whole would likely benefit from a fair few more.
With any long-form work consisting of diary entries, we enter a space more meaningful to the writer than the reader. While some of Wisenberg’s digressions add richness to the narratives, others feel like distractions. She is surrounded by friends and acquaintances whose lives we pop into for a moment, only to lose them in the midst of all her other recollections. Names and places filter in and out; only a certain number feel memorable. And because the lens of a diary entry is so close, our distance from the narrator is extremely short. We must remind ourselves that this is a single story, a single cancer journey, and not indicative of the disease as a whole. To her credit, Wisenberg does acknowledge the many privileges she has in this diagnostic process, such as access to healthcare, a support system, high health literacy, and being a cis white woman in the breast cancer space. More time spent in this area could have helped the narrative, but these are minor observations over the course of an otherwise strong, personal memoir.
The casual reader is much more likely to read and grasp The Adventures of Cancer Bitch than they would a more literary take on the disease and survivorship. As a healthcare provider in the cancer field and an avid reader, I could envision recommending this to patients as what it is and nothing more. A single experience of breast cancer, well-told.
NONFICTION
The Adventures of Cancer Bitch
By S.L. Wisenberg
Tortoise Books
Published October 15, 2024
