No Obvious Distress by Amanda Quaid
John Murray
‘Funny, moving, wise and constantly surprising’ Martin Chilton, Independent Memoir of the Month
‘Astonishing. These poems glimmer with a white-hot beauty that is hard won, and that sings’ Sarah Ruhl
‘Striking, surprising, and technically excellent, the poems resonate way beyond their endings’ Roger Robinson
Patient is a normal appearing woman in no obvious distress.
On an ordinary day, out with her three-year-old in the park, Amanda Quaid received a life-changing call – the back pain she had been living with for years was actually a rare and aggressive form of cancer. In an instant, life became a series of sterile rooms, medical charts and body-altering treatments which completely upend Amanda’s marriage, work and family life as she knows it.
Poetry became a lifeline for Amanda, a form to organize the chaos and pain of day-to-day life into order and beauty. In inventive and arresting poems that explore desire, marriage, motherhood and mortality, No Obvious Distress is a powerful memoir-in-verse about Amanda’s unique experience. But it is also a tender, witty and universal collection that asks how we can continue to live and love in times of uncertainty.
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