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Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik |
| Original language | |
| English | |
NATURAL KILLER
A Memoir
With the probing lyricism of On Immunity by Eula Biss and the searing honesty of A Life's Work by Rachel Cusk, this is NATURAL KILLER by Harriet Alida Lyean intimate and gripping memoir penned in the aftermath of the cancer that nearly took her life. In record time, NATURAL KILLER sold in under a week to McClelland & Stewart for Spring 2020.
At just fifteen years old, Harriet Alida Lye was diagnosed with a form of leukemia called Natural Killer, which has been named the rarest and worst malignancy. The average life span of patients with this diagnosis is 58 days. There are no known survivors. There were no known survivors.
I need people to know that I exist, Harriet writes, that their experiment worked, that by some combination of luck and science, I'm alive.
Fifteen years after Harriet's diagnosis, another lifetime past: she became pregnant, despite having been told that her chemotherapy treatment protocol would likely make natural conception impossible.
To be a mother is to make a death, as death is bound up in life. From the age of fifteen, she knew her body had the ability to create death. She never trusted, was told to not even imagine, that it also had the power, that magical banality, to create life.
Weaving in source material from the year she spent in hospital, written by both of her parents and her teenage self, this searing personal reflection is expertly told through a seamless blend of narrative, snapshots, journal entries, and blog updates posted for friends and family.
NATURAL KILLER explores what it's like to live with a life-threatening illness and survive it; what it means for a body to turn against itself, to self-destruct from within; and what it takes to regain trust in a body that has committed the ultimate betrayal.
Harriet Alida Lye is from Richmond Hill, Ontario. She studied Philosophy and English at the University of King's College and lived in Paris for seven years. She founded and edited Her Royal Majesty, a literary arts magazine that ran for six years. Her work has been published by VICE, Hazlitt, The Happy Reader, Catapult, The Guardian, The National Post, and more. Harriet's debut novel, The Honey Farm, was published by Nimbus in Canada, Liveright in the US and Penguin Random House in Australia. She lives in Toronto.
I need people to know that I exist, Harriet writes, that their experiment worked, that by some combination of luck and science, I'm alive.
Fifteen years after Harriet's diagnosis, another lifetime past: she became pregnant, despite having been told that her chemotherapy treatment protocol would likely make natural conception impossible.
To be a mother is to make a death, as death is bound up in life. From the age of fifteen, she knew her body had the ability to create death. She never trusted, was told to not even imagine, that it also had the power, that magical banality, to create life.
Weaving in source material from the year she spent in hospital, written by both of her parents and her teenage self, this searing personal reflection is expertly told through a seamless blend of narrative, snapshots, journal entries, and blog updates posted for friends and family.
NATURAL KILLER explores what it's like to live with a life-threatening illness and survive it; what it means for a body to turn against itself, to self-destruct from within; and what it takes to regain trust in a body that has committed the ultimate betrayal.
Harriet Alida Lye is from Richmond Hill, Ontario. She studied Philosophy and English at the University of King's College and lived in Paris for seven years. She founded and edited Her Royal Majesty, a literary arts magazine that ran for six years. Her work has been published by VICE, Hazlitt, The Happy Reader, Catapult, The Guardian, The National Post, and more. Harriet's debut novel, The Honey Farm, was published by Nimbus in Canada, Liveright in the US and Penguin Random House in Australia. She lives in Toronto.
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Book
Published 2021-01-01 by McClelland & Stewart |