Ann Pai’s, My Other Body was a self-published book. I ran across it while (hangs head in shame) joyfully browsing some of the truly awful self-published titles. I had stumbled across the now defunct website POD-Dy mouth and although I was tempted to click through since it seemed to be devoted to respectable self-published books (hangs head lower in shame) one of the entries caught my eye. It was My Other Body and the excerpts were so good that I bought the (e)book. And even though it provided absolutely no fodder for my demented demand for poor writing (think of me as the Statute of Liberty of Literature - give me your tired, your poor writing...), it was well worth it.
The non-fiction book follows the author as she watches her morbidly obese sister, Joyce, battle multiple infections and systemic problems that cannot even be adequately diagnosed because the amount of fat on her body makes diagnosis impossible. Pai’s description of her sister’s body and their relationship is beautiful, hypnotic even. For example, when the author comes back to the hospital room to find her sister being bathed, something she was not completely capable of doing herself:
"I came back too early. Checking, I peeked around the doorway's blue swag and saw her slumped and quiet in the shower chair, her back to the door. Water cascaded over her naked shoulders, over the chords of her hair, over the chair. My chest tightened as though cold air were being pumped into it. I couldn't speak. I couldn't recognize her body as a body. Her back and shoulders looked hunched under an heavy, silken pack of white pelts. Her immense buttocks collided, flattened pale planets, biologically incomprehensible. The fat, wet sandbag of her naked left thigh squashed against the shower chair. I backed out, sobered and awed."
And if Pai needs a second career, she might want to consider rewriting medical textbooks as the medical descriptions are elegant as well. Describing her the function of the kidneys, "The kidneys cup the spine like mitten potholders."
Pai allows Joyce to be a complicated person. She is sometimes critical, is not always honest, and fails to make much effort to make her health better. But she is Ann’s sister and the bond between them, even when the ends of that bond are barbed, is undeniable. Pai manages to create a brutally beautiful description of the sisters' relationship.
The only thing that did not work, for me at least is that the book is interspersed with the inner thoughts of a character struggling with weight. I think the idea is to cause the reader to challenge their assumptions when they find out the thoughts are those of Ann not Joyce (yes, it worked). These sections are written in a different voice and don’t have the same lyrical quality to them and instead read more like the pages of a weight loss blog. I think the book would have been better served to incorporate these sections into the rest of the book in one voice. I am probably being a bit harsh about those sections, but I felt the rest of the book was so well done that I think it made these sections stand out more.
While I didn’t find my nugget of awfulness in my POD search, My Other Body was a more than welcome surprise. Now back to our regularly scheduled search…
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