Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Maren Wiederhold
Categories
Memoirs

BREATH

Carly-Jay Metcalfe

A Triumphant Story of Hope and Survival

"I am dying. I know that I'm dying, despite not having been told by my doctors that I am dying. I know I am dying because I'm in the dying room."

Carly-Jay Metcalfe was born with cystic fibrosis, survived a double-lung transplant at the age of twenty-one and faced a rare cancer at the age of thirty. What she has endured should have killed her, but her humour, courage and optimism became her best survival skills. From her hospitalised childhood to her many friendships, loves and losses, Carly-Jay describes the fickle nature of life with candour and warmth. She writes with compelling insight about organ donation, opioid addiction and survivor's guilt, while still managing to find joy amongst the wreckage. Breath is a stunningly frank and darkly funny memoir about living, dying and trying to breathe. CARLY-JAY METCALFE is a Queensland-based writer. Her work has been published in Kill Your Darlings, The Guardian and TEXT Journal. She is a passionate advocate for organ donation and for more honest conversations around dying and death.

Available products
Book Published 2024-03-01 by UQP University of Queensland Press - St Lucia (AUS)

Comments

Brilliant, funny, visceral - and real. Those who live close to death really know what it is to be alive. Breath is more than memoir; it's a conversation we should all be having.

The only thing more remarkable than Carly-Jay Metcalfe's story, is the way she tells it. Breath captures the privileges and pains of living in our transitory bodies. The absurdities. The cruelties. The bone-deep joys. This book is a love letter to the sublime human mess. An invitation to pay attention to every precious lungful.

Breath is a taboo-busting examination of illness, propelled by a lust for life and language. Carly-Jay Metcalfe scrutinises the beauty and brutality of the human condition in a voice that is witty and original and true.