In-Between Days: A Memoir About Living with Cancer - Softcover

Harrison, Teva

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1487001088 ISBN 13: 9781487001087

Publisher: House of Anansi Press, 2017

Synopsis

Teva Harrison was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer at the age of 37. In this brilliant and inspiring graphic memoir, she documents through comic illustration and short personal essays what it means to live with the disease. She confronts with heartbreaking honesty the crises of identity that cancer brings: a lifelong vegetarian, Teva agrees to use experimental drugs that have been tested on animals. She struggles to reconcile her long-term goals with an uncertain future, balancing the innate sadness of cancer with everyday acts of hope and wonder. She also examines those quiet moments of helplessness and loving with her husband, her family, and her friends, while they all adjust to the new normal.

Ultimately, In-Between Days is redemptive and uplifting, reminding each one of us of how beautiful life is, and what a gift.

About this title

About the Author

TEVA HARRISON is a writer and graphic artist. She is the author of the critically acclaimed graphic memoir, In-Between Days, which is based on her graphic series about living with cancer published in The Walrus. In-Between Days was a finalist for the 2016 Governor General Literary Award for Nonfiction and wasnamed one of the most anticipated books of 2016 by the Globe and Mail, which also named the author one of 16 Torontonians to Watch. She has commented on CBC Radio and in the Globe and Mail about her experience. Numerous health organizations have invited her to speak publicly on behalf of the metastatic cancer community. She lives in Toronto.

Review

Harrison’s drawing style is more freeform than finicky, and her linework has an appealing vulnerability. But even beyond that aesthetic quality, there’s a remarkable directness to seeing vignettes from a life coloured by cancer that cuts to the quick...The results are profoundly, achingly affecting...What’s striking is, as Sontag might say, her resistance to metaphoric thinking. There’s whimsy, to be sure: the author and a friend don tails and sequins and march in a mermaid parade, and Harrison conjures childhood summers spent stargazing and having flower-petal snowball fights. But when it comes to the day-to-day details of cancer, Harrison is unflinching in her efforts to tell―and show―the straight story. (Maclean’s Magazine)

In her heartbreakingly honest exploration of these spaces in-between, Harrison provides a useful guide for those who cannot know the thoughts and fears of someone living with chronic illness; and for those experiencing a similar situation, the book shows that even in the most personal of journeys, you are not alone. At its heart, In-Between Days is a firm statement that joy and hope can exist in the same space as anxiety and fear; that each day we are given should be lived, as Harrison says, “With a sense of wonder and delight.” (Michael Melgaard National Post)

There’s no real preparation for how hard Teva Harrison’s stunning graphic novel will hit you. It doesn’t humanize the disease ― that would be banal ― and it doesn’t aggrandize the journey ― that would be self-help bunk. Rather, it portrays the process as something achingly human, a daily tumult of stuff that roughly amounts to survival. Teva Harrison has stared into the abyss. And what has stared back but love? (Richard Poplak, author of Ja No Man)

Inspiring, eye-opening and darkly funny, In-Between Days runs the emotional gamut, with comic strips so sharp they feel like a punch to the heart. (CBC Books “How I Wrote It")

“Teva Harrison’s diagnosis with incurable cancer removes the expectation of an abundance of more ― more dreams fulfilled, more time ― but focuses her attention on the near and immediate. In this honest and raw memoir, Harrison examines and discovers, grieves, and celebrates, and takes us with her as she crafts a ragged and resonant beauty from her experience in these In-Between Days.” (Miranda Hill, author of Sleeping Funny)

In-Between Days, a graphic novel that combines comics and short essays that explore what it is like to live with incurable cancer, is, all at once, heartbreaking and heartwarming, revealing and honest, all the while showcasing how beautiful and unfair life can be (Canadian Jewish News)

...an unflinchingly honest and occasionally joyful account of Harrison’s day-to-day life (Metro News)

Beautiful, heartbreaking, honest, and true, In-Between Days explores not just what it means to live with terminal cancer, but what it means to live with integrity in the face of our mortality. I couldn’t put it down. (Alison Pick, author of Between Gods and Far to Go)

Teva’s art and reflections powerfully capture the struggles of being young and facing the certain, yet uncertain end of your life. May we all be this honest with ourselves as we deal with life’s challenges. Inspiring, insightful, contemplative, thank you Teva. (Geoff Eaton, Executive Director, Young Adult Cancer Canada)

With insight and honesty, Teva Harrison invites us to join her on this deeply personal, beautifully expressed journey with cancer. Through this remarkable book, we encounter awkward ironies, the quietly harrowing reality of our mortal human condition, and moments of distilled life and beauty. Wryly unflinching in her examination of her condition, its treatment, and herself, Teva shares with us the gift that emerges from her in-between days. (Vincent Lam)

Edition details

• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1487001088
• ISBN 13: 9781487001087
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 128