The Two Kinds of Decay

Sarah Manguso is an American writer and poet. Her short story collection Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape (2007), was included with story collections by Dave Eggers and Deb Olin Unferth in McSweeney's One Hundred and Forty-Five Stories in a Small Box. Her poetry collections are Siste Viator (2006) and The Captain Lands in Paradise (2002). Her poetry has appeared in the London Review of Books, the New Republic, the Paris Review, the Pushcart Prize annual, and three volumes of the Best American Poetry series. Honours for her writing include a Hodder Fellowship and the Rome Prize. She has served on the faculty of the graduate writing programs at Columbia and the New School. She lives in Brooklyn.

A "NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW" EDITORS' CHOICEA "TIME OUT CHICAGO "BEST BOOK OF THE YEARA "SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE" BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

"Manguso has produced a remarkable, clear-eyed account that turns horror into something humane and beautiful."--"The New York Times Book Review "

"Moving . . . a fiercely truthful memoir of illness."--"The Boston Globe "

"Here is not a day-by-day description of this grueling time, but an impressionistic text filled with bright, poetic flashes. . . . Many sick people learn to live in the moment, but the power of Manguso's writing makes that truism revelatory."--"The Washington Post Book World"

"Manguso's slender volume is written in a sparese, no-nonsense style that can be chilling but makes you cheer for the author."--"New York Post"

"Manguso writes this account from the far end of the illness, looking back on it from a position of physical strength, biting ferocity, and unsentimental wit."--"Bookforum"





"A series of brief, elliptical vignettes composed of sentences as spare as they are unsparing . . . Manguso pushes beyond the familiar confrontation between doctor and patient to explore the linguistic confusion at the heart of the power struggle."--"Slate"



"[A] stunning story . . . Manguso's deadpan tone works equally well in service of the painful and funny moments, or when the two meet."--"Time Out Chicago"