You've Been So Lucky Already: A Memoir - Softcover

Black, Alethea

3.56

1,685 ratings by Goodreads

9781503900608: You've Been So Lucky Already: A Memoir

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1503900606 ISBN 13: 9781503900608

Publisher: Little A, 2018

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From the award-winning author of I Knew You’d Be Lovely comes an empowering and disarmingly funny memoir about grief and illness—and the wit and wisdom it takes to survive it.

As a child, Alethea Black drifts between her father, a brilliant mathematician who is also her best friend, and her mother, a frank and outspoken woman on fire. After her father’s death, Alethea is left unmoored, a young woman more connected to life’s ethereal mysteries than to practical things such as doing laundry or paying taxes.

And then, just when life seems to be getting back on track, she’s suddenly racked by crushing fatigue, inexplicable pain, and memory loss. With her grasp on reality fading, and specialist after specialist declaring nothing is wrong, Alethea turns to her own research and desperate home remedies. But even as her frantic quest for wellness seems to lead to confusion and despair, she discovers more about her own strength than she ever could have imagined—and becomes a woman on fire herself.

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About the Author:

Alethea Black was born in Boston and graduated from Harvard College in 1991. Her work has been featured in the Kenyon Review, the American Literary Review, and Narrative Magazine, among others. The author of the short-story collection I Knew You’d Be Lovely, she’s the recipient of the Arts & Letters Prize and is a three-time winner of the MOTH StorySLAM. Black lives in Los Angeles County, California, with her dachshund, Josie. For more on her work, visit www.aletheablack.com.

Review:

“The book...succeeds in offering a candid depiction of a woman’s struggle with her own vulnerabilities as she seeks to understand the ‘pile of terrifyingly beautiful rubble’ left in the wake of all her struggles. Flawed but no less poignant for its imperfections.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Wonderfully poetic with wry observations, Black’s writing both amazes and charms.” —Publishers Weekly

“The surface of that story plays as a plucky attempt to lighten a heavy load: Black is a child of divorce who is thrown for a loop by her father’s early death from cancer, endures a series of mysterious illnesses in adulthood, and eventually loses her house, all of her possessions and her live-in boyfriend. By recounting her travails in a conversational tone...she borrows from popular single-lady conventions to turn the frown of bad fortune upside down.” —The New York Times Book Review

“With humor and candor, You’ve Been So Lucky Already makes serious discussions of health, illness, and tragedy much more palatable. Yet she manages to strike a balance, never losing the emotions and the struggles that come with this territory. Though its structure could have been tighter and some of its anecdotes are less funny than others, it is an altogether rather compelling tale of journey and recovery.” —Harvard Crimson

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