Member-only story
Review of Between Two Kingdoms
A Memoir About Cancer and a Journey
I read a lot of memoirs. I read a lot of memoirs about people with diseases. But when I read Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad, I was still surprised that I was reading so much about a woman’s journey through cancer and not more about her actual journey after cancer.
The cover features a picture of a woman, possibly her, and a dog sitting on a VW type bus and the description stated something about the road trip she took after her cancer diagnosis and treatment. But, that story doesn’t start until much later in the book after her discovery, diagnosis and almost four years of treatment for leukemia.
I read an advanced reader ebook, so I couldn’t tell physically how much of the story was focused on her cancer and treatment and how much was focused on her road trip, but it seemed like the majority of the story was focused on her illness and treatment.
The Kingdom of the Well and the Kingdom of the Sick
Whether it was because of what the book promised or my own hopes, I wanted more of the story about how she learned to live after her cancer. The title comes from an idea that struck Jaouad from Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor:
