Lopsided: How Having Breast Cancer Can Be Really Distracting - Hardcover

Norton, Meredith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670019283 ISBN 13: 9780670019281

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2008

Synopsis

An irreverent memoir about the author's life with cancer describes her early symptoms, decision to move back in with her compulsive parents, and frustration with receiving multiple copies of Lance Armstrong's book, a journey during which she remembers her childhood and rails against self-pity. 40,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Meredith Norton was born in Berkeley, California. She attended Columbia College, majoring in English. She has traveled extensively and resided for several years in Europe.

Review

“...a truly elegant memoir...Norton is terrific at narrating the physical slapstick of battling this disease. But She’s even better on the arrogance and pretense the cancer reveals...she’s fresh and adorable, and you hope she sticks round to produce at least another dozen surly, lovely books.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine

“By including touches of wit and sarcasm, Norton strikes a successful balance between light and heavy, keeping her audience consistently engaged.”
—San Francisco Chronicle

“If you seek to be moved — to laughter, that is — look no further than newbie Meredith Norton’s memoir, Lopsided: How Having Breast Cancer Can Be Really Distracting. Her victimless approach doesn’t sugarcoat the experience but rather brings to light hilarious universals (e.g., constant Lance Armstrong mentions from friends and family).”
—Daily Candy

“Lopsided is fantastic. I read it in one sitting, and it completely swallowed me up. For one entire day, a girl I don’t know and never met became my best friend, and I have not been able to stop thinking about her since. LOPSIDED is powerful, funny, courageous, and moving, but most of all, it is human.”
—Laurie Notaro, author of The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club

“...wise, humorous memoir...Her disarming frankness renders the book less a cancer survival guide and more a lovably unfiltered e-mail from a hilarious friend. There has not been a funnier, more honest cancer account in recent memory.”
—People

“I hope to encounter this clear, incisive, highly amusing voice again. Soon.”
—Orlando Sentinel

“Norton is one plucky dame, and she displays a sharp eye for the human condition...[she]calls herself a storyteller, and the tale she has crafted from a life-altering event is indeed hard to put down”
—Kirkus Reviews

“[Lopsided] crackle[s] with heartfelt intensity and irreverence.”
—Booklist

“Her tone may be facetious, her language colorful, and her distractions gritty (readers will gasp at the taxidermy activities of a former neighbor), but her view of cancer (funny and irreverent) and her place in the world (she found herself “waiting for a miracle. Not a miracle to save my life, but the miracle to make something of it”) will make readers stand up and cheer. Highly recommended...”
—Library Journal

“Meredith Norton gives marvelous new meaning to the phrase ‘a sick sense of humor.’ And her lippy, lovable, sharp-shooting story will find your heartstrings by way of your funny bone. This isn’t Chicken Soup for the soul; it’s Tabasco. Fans of David Sedaris should fall to their knees and worship this book. LOPSIDED is, hands down, the best new memoir that I’ve read in ages.”
— Koren Zailckas, author of Smashed

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0670019283
• ISBN 13: 9780670019281
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 224