In-Between Days

Starred review from January 30, 2017
This unforgettable memoir takes readers on a grueling and very personal journey into cancer treatment. Harrison’s prose and distinct illustrations recount her journey from being a healthy woman with a promising future into the world of palliative care after she was diagnosed with incurable cancer at age 37. She shares her disappointments, medical appointments, best and worst days, and interactions with those around her, recounting what it feels like to go for an MRI at 3:45 a.m. With brutally honest writing, she describes the challenge of balancing pain management with being fully immersed in her life, and the problem with hope: “I have to find a way to balance the hope I need to get up every day with the pragmatism I need to deal with bad news.” Going far beyond her cancer patient status, her reflections poignantly take readers into her life: introducing them to her family, venturing back in time to when she fell in love with her now-husband, and reminiscing about some of the powerful women and men whom she has loved and lost. Harrison’s short, sharp essays are raw, brilliant, thought-provoking, and very disquieting.

Starred review from January 1, 2017
A devastating and inspiring cancer memoir mixing drawings and essays, hope and dread."I've been an artist my whole life," writes Harrison, "but this is the first time I have felt the need for narrative." The narrative amplifies the art, as each single-page comic is followed by a short essay with the same title, the words illuminating the theme with greater depth and nuance, the drawings conveying feelings and experiences so powerful that they transcend expression in words. At age 37, the author was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, which could be arrested through treatment but couldn't be cured. It's a genetic strain that has afflicted women in her family for generations, and the memoir expands from a single woman's treatment into the legacy left by cancer within her blood ties. It is also a love story, as the author felt an almost immediate connection with the man who would soon become her husband and has remained so supportive throughout the pain, the treatments, and the hope. This isn't easy reading, for cancer isn't an easy disease. As the title of the graphic memoir suggests, the author feels like she is in limbo, that she is dying with a fatal disease yet continuing to find passion and purpose in living a day at a time. The narrative has a cathartic power for her, but it also serves a greater purpose, giving readers the sort of account she wished she'd had. "I know that somewhere--if I could have just found her--there was a woman who could have told me I was not alone," she writes. "And that would have changed everything." What Harrison has learned through her ordeal is that whatever she is feeling, it is natural to feel--and that, ultimately, all of us are living with the same finite mortality. An impressive graphic memoir.

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March 15, 2017
At 37, Harrison was diagnosed with stage-four, metastatic breast cancer, and suddenly her pain and fatigue began to make terrible sense. She explains in the preface that drawing her experiences with cancer became a therapeutic exorcism and that, for the first time in her life as an artist, she felt she needed words to tell her story, too. In her first book, titled, inked comics, often featuring high-contrast, impactful portraits of herself and others, appear alongside expanded, written versions of the same thought, story, question, or memory. Why didn't cancer skip her, a health-conscious, longtime vegetarian? Though opposed to animal testing, she guesses it's okay when it comes to her cancer drugs but still feels like a hypocrite. Why did no one warn her how horrible medically induced menopause could be? She hopes she's gotten enough cancer, a sadly inherited hallmark in her family, for her living female relatives to be spared. Harrison, who speaks publicly about living with metastatic cancer, presents a circumspect and hopeful view of what is otherwise devastating.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)