Natural Killer
A Memoir
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
With a new introduction by Ashley Audrain, author of The Push and The Whispers
"I need people to know that I exist, that their experiment worked, that by some combination of luck and science, I'm alive."
In this harrowing and intimate memoir, Harriet Alida Lye explores how, at just fifteen years old, she was diagnosed with a variant of leukemia called Natural Killer, named "the rarest and worst malignancy." The average survival time of patients with this diagnosis is fifty-eight days. There were no known survivors.
Told through a seamless blend of narrative, medical notes, and journal entries, Natural Killer explores what it’s like to live with a life-threatening illness and survive it, and how the memory of a body turning against itself resurfaces at moments of profound vulnerability, especially in becoming a mother. After having spent nine months living at Toronto’s SickKids Hospital as a teenager, Harriet spent most of her pregnancy reckoning with how to trust a body that had once committed the ultimate betrayal.
With probing lyricism and searing honesty, Harriet Alida Lye examines what it means not just to survive the impossible, but to build a life in its aftermath.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Being diagnosed with a fatal illness can be the tragic end of a story, but in this unforgettable memoir, it’s just the beginning. At 15, Harriet Alida Lye was diagnosed with one of the rarest and most lethal forms of cancer, a type of leukaemia known as “natural killer.” Lye uses her own medical records, as well as journals (both hers and her parents’) to tell her harrowing story, from the onset of the illness through her diagnosis and treatment. All the while, she’s dealing with the looming fact that statistically speaking, the chance she’s going to live another year is about zero. But Natural Killer isn’t as heavy and frightening as it might sound, because Lye intersperses her medical ordeal with stories about normal teen things and touching anecdotes about her miraculous pregnancy 15 years after her leukaemia nightmare. Lye’s intimate struggle to overcome her circumstances—an ongoing fight between her mind and her body—generates an incredible sense of tension that kept us turning pages. Reading this book is a fantastic reminder that life is something to be celebrated.
