Meghan O'RourkeRecensioni

I wrote this review a while ago, but it obviously did not stay. I enjoyed this book to an extent, but it is very heart-wrenching. It will make you cry from the beginning through the end. It really is not a feel-good book because it delves so deeply into the reader's mortality and guilt that only those who have been through what the author is talking about can really understand. O'Rourke's writing is very engaging, and in that respect the book is masterful and a delight. The subject matter is best left for those who need understanding (or to show understanding) in the wake of tragedy.

In The Invisible Kingdom, author Meghan O'Rourke seeks to understand the mysterious, debilitating illnesses that dominated her life for a decade. Does she have a complex autoimmune disturbance, chronic Lyme disease, or a vexing combination of both? To get answers, O'Rourke maxes out her credit cards traveling all over to meet with experts and to try both Western and integrative therapies, neither of which is completely satisfactory. She is particularly critical of Western medicine’s tendency to dismiss women’s suffering as being “all in their heads”, if an immediate, convenient cause is not found. Eventually O'Rourke achieves a state of relative health that allows her to resume teaching, have two children, and write this book.

One thing I noticed that O'Rourke did not do in her travels was meet with other chronic disease sufferers, although she does quote some she reads about online.

I thought I would really like this book, but I grew tired of the self-absorbed nature of the narrative. Still, I recommend it to those with chronic diseases.

As a woman who has sought out doctors for a range of symptoms, only to be told that my levels are normal and I just have anxiety - I relate to this book more than I'd like and appreciate its existence. The author explores chronic illness on a macro and micro level and highlights how difficult it is to be seen, heard and truly understood as a person with hard-to-identify auto-immune disease(s). She stresses how important is it for the medical and scientific community to reevaluate how we view the individual when it comes to healthcare, looking at the person as a whole -- rather than a collection of separate organs or body systems -- and considering the totality of the condition. This book doesn't give any answers but rather points out how hard finding answers can be.

I'd highly recommend this book to anyone whose life is impacted by an auto-immune disease or chronic illness.

recommended by Clint Smith (How the Word is Passed)

Meghan O’ Rourke’s The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness was a National Book Award Finalist. This book presented the grueling hardships of the author’s struggle with the devastating illnesses of autoimmune diseases. Her struggles began in earnest as a young woman at university and persisted later in her life.
Eventually, Meghan was able to find suitable help after visiting numerous specialists. During these encounters she was upset by the lack of knowledge concerning autoimmune diseases, physicians’ inability to make a diagnosis, and hearing that sufferers of such an illness must have a psychological problem.
After years of trials and errors she was diagnosed as having Lyme disease. Meghan received a treatment of antibiotics that helped. Yet, she continued to suffer with bodily pains and brain fog, but at times she felt better. Well, enough, to make trips, teach classes, and be able to work out. It was after having a fecal transfer in England she got a boost. Meghan soon became pregnant and gave birth to a son.
Caring for a new-born child, she was also faced with an ailing father. With her husband Jim and child, her dad moved into their home in Brooklyn. Her father who was suffering from lymphoma cancer got well enough and moved back to Connecticut. But these experiences were a further strain on her ailing body. With other health setbacks, and times of feeling well, Meghan was pregnant again, and gave birth to another child.
The book concluded with the author feeling rather conflicted. She wrote that she did not want to give a false sense of the meaning of her suffering. As she put it, at times she felt lousy, and sometimes better. But the illness itself robbed her of many precious moments she missed as a young woman because of her health. She did not even know for sure if she had Lyme disease, in addition to several other autoimmune diseases. However, she was presently feeling better, but has continued living with chronic disease with her family.

It is so validating not only to hear someone coping with chronic illness but the struggle to even get them diagnosed.

A wonderfully researched and biographical look into chronic illness and the author's personal experiences with it. Most doctors like to treat traumatic illnesses as they are easier to diagnose and heal. A chronic disease lingers and hard to pin down and treat such as a bevy of auto immune illnesses. The author virtually missed her thirties to a wide variety of symptoms that virtually debilitate her for over a decade. She even touches on long Covid as a help to chronic disease sufferers as it makes doctors more sympathetic to long term hard to diagnose health issues..

It is so validating not only to hear someone coping with chronic illness but the struggle to even get them diagnosed.½

“Anatomy of Failure” is a really great poem. Didn't really understand why there were five different sections, two in which the poems just seemed out of place. That said, some really great poems in here and I'm looking forward to reading more of O'Rourke's work.

Meghan O'Rourke is issuing a challenge to all of us here, not just to the medical community, a challenge for more sensivity and patience, a challenge to reimagine the way we relate to and care for the members of our communities who suffer from chronic illnesses and/or pain. It is a challenge we should take to heart.

And yet this book fell somewhat flat for this reader. I have experienced some of the types of frustrations of which Ms. O'Rourke writes; the book was well written and there were passages that resonated. But overall it was in need of serious editing. At times very intimate and personal, at times oddly removed, the voice was inconsistent. I can accept that this may in fact be part of the point, as O'Rourke does write about the way chronic suffering attacks the self. And yet in her call for greater tolerance the book comes across not so much as a plea for help but as bitterness; in her call for solutions there appears to be little discernment. I do think O'Rourke's message is important, and I hope that this book resonates with some readers, but for this one, the book felt oddly unformed and unsettled.½

Well-written but I felt it was far too long; that might just be because I already know too much about chronic disease. Probably best appreciated by healthy people who need shit explained to them.

A thought provoking memoir about chronic illness and the American medical system. Sometimes it felt a touch repetitious but then that's the nature of chronic illness

This is the second book of poetry I have read by [a:Meghan O'Rourke|57343|Meghan O'Rourke|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1302121405p2/57343.jpg], the first being her most recent, [b:Sun in Days: Poems|34068530|Sun in Days Poems|Meghan O'Rourke|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1487351757s/34068530.jpg|55079117], which was also a chance pick-up at the library for me. I subsequently read her memoir, [b:The Long Goodbye|9499320|The Long Goodbye|Meghan O'Rourke|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1440994569s/9499320.jpg|14384851], about grief and the loss of her mother which is what clinched my somewhat starry-eyed love for Meghan O'Rourke's writings.

Since I completed Halflife in the early part of January, I have gone back and dipped into it a couple of times and revisited a couple of the poems I liked the most. There are a number of them, but, for me, the cycle of poems in section II, titled Still Life Amongst Partial Outlines is one of the best parts of the book.

There are nine poems total, two of which obviously describe the rape of two girls in the woods of Vermont in 1981. One of the girls is murdered and the other girl, who happens to share the same name as the author, Meghan O'Rourke, lived and was able to describe the attackers. O'Rourke writes that for her, reading the newspaper article about this in 1988 was "-a story that could not be forgotten or owned, like looking in a mirror and discovering someone else's face."

Then again, it is possible the whole nine poem cycle is about this incident, the two boys who perpetrated it, the girl who was murdered and the girl who lived. At times I feel some of the poems are autobiographical and that the author's story became intertwined with the earlier one in what became a "There, but for the grace of God, go I." moment for Meghan O'Rourke.

Of all of the poems my personal favorite is VI

When you are a child this is all you have:
rules, mountains, pools, boundaries, magic

that doesn't work. What happened to her
did not happen to you. You were a child,

you were safe, you were not harmed. But
there are fields inside us. They grow.

How do you choose which ones to make room for
under the golden sun, and which ones to lock away.

so that men cannot climb into them at twilight,
vaulting over the iron fence

and landing lightly in the grass?
What happens when you invite what you love

into the field and it will not stay?
Is the grass still green, does it continue to grow like grass?

I can't quite put into words what I understand about this whole cycle of poems. Perhaps, with time and practice, I will be better able to express my insights in a more coherent way.

The Long Goodbye is one of the best books I have read this year. It was moving and at times brought me to tears.

After reading Meghan O'Rourke's book of poetry, Sun in Days, I wanted to find out more about the author and wound up on her Wikipedia page and eventually on the author's own page. I don't actively seek out books about grief and mourning...my mother died in 2013 and the moving on part for me came about 9 months down the road but I still look back at the guilt and sadness I had at the time and have wanted to try to understand it better.

Meghan O'Rourke's relationship with her mother was far different from my relationship with mine. I can't help but wonder that one's grief is shaped by the prior relationship with the deceased. I know that to a large degree, I saw my mother as a figure I was unable to say no to and who manipulated my life even into my adult years. There is too much backstory to be able to explain in depth all that I felt toward my mother in her declining years of diabetes and eventual move into an assisted living facility but suffice to say, our relationship was strained. She was prone to circular arguments, had the possible beginnings of dementia and, my sisters and I believe, had undiagnosed narcissism that made her a challenge to enjoy being around.

O'Rourke's writing has a narrative voice that is immediately appealing to me despite the subject matter. I wanted to read the book in the evening when I came home even though, at times, it left me thinking about my own mourning experience and feeling rather down.

Can it be that what O'Rourke went through was a more "normal" or healthier experience than what I went through? I just remember feeling profoundly guilty about my mother's last few years and my relationship with her whereas O'Rourke's loss is more deeply felt and reflects a more profound connection between two people.

I really want to go back now and read many of the poems in O'Rourke's Sun in Days because I realize now that many of them were about her grief or tidbits from her young life with her parents. I also will actively seek to own Meghan O'Rourke's books rather than just getting them from the library.

Given that I knew little about chronic illness and autoimmune diseases, O'Rourke's book was enlightening. About a third of the way through, she tells readers that if they feel “exhausted” as she painstakingly chronicles her suffering from mysterious illnesses, try to imagine the exhaustion one feels living with them. People who struggle with illnesses that have no name "get little sympathy," O'Rourke suggests.

The author went on a journey over a decade plus to find out what was wrong with her, and surprisingly she got some answers but nothing definitive; this is how chronic illness can affect someone’s life. There’s lots of good reporting as well about many autoimmune diseases as well as the medical community. I can’t believe I’ve read two books this month that talk about fecal transplants; had never heard of it and now know too much.

I almost didn't finish this book. Multiple times. I had at least one anxiety attack in the middle of it. It's taken me almost two weeks to get to the end. It's one of the most painful books I've ever read, unvarnished sorrow, alarming in how realistic it seemed. I picked it up after my dog died but as I was coming out of my grief, I fell into Meghan O'Rourke's -- a ravaging, fierce grief that, while very specific, also spoke to the universality of the awful experience of losing someone close.

I found the first half of the book almost unreadable. Not because of the writing, which was exquisite and delicate and vociferously sincere, but because the experience of watching your mother die slowly felt so excruciating. At one point, toward the end of her mother's life, faced with the inevitability of my own looming demise, I had to put the book down for a few days and think about what I'm doing with my life. The second half, too, was harrowing -- the author felt her mother's absence so sharply, and there was no way for her to overcome the pain.

I loved how, after her mother's death, O'Rourke starts recovering and seeing the world in a new light. To me, it seemed like she saw everything in a new color, everything weighted down by its mortality but also freed of another kind of weight. The beautiful excerpts of other people's experiences of grief were powerful, too. I should re-read this book one day in a slower, more careful manner to fully comprehend O'Rourke's pain.

3.5 stars Meghan O'Rourke is a poet and that is evident in her prose as well. A memoir about her mother's illness and death, this book vacillates between deeply personal and somewhat clinical as she strives to make sense of her loss. Her mother was only 55 -- it was a fast-moving invasive cancer. Meghan is in her early 30s and the book is written only about 18 mos. after the event, so feelings are rather raw, but very authentic. She doesn't try to sugar coat things or make herself or her family look ideal -- she has regrets and she is admittedly self-centered at times. In trying to understand her deep sorrow and her visceral response to it, she has read widely and distills those other works nicely with key quotes and explanations "believing in some primitive part of my brain that if I read them all, if I learn everything there is to know, I'll solve the problem." (290) "Death and the sun are not to be looked at steadily" she quotes La Rochefoucauld, but only by facing it head-on is she able to make any headway. She also examines, briefly our American culture's fear of death and the rituals we have lost in encountering it, especially for those who have no faith tradition. She misses a public ability to mourn and to have her mourning recognized. This is a book that speaks to the uniqueness of grief to each individual and each situation, despite common threads and trends. I appreciate her beautiful writing and the sentiments she expresses, but it felt a little self-indulgent at times and therefore hard to relate to, but thankfully, I have not lost a mother. (a condition for which there is no word, she notes). There is a helpful index in the back of some of her thorough reading, which is a benefit. Reading this book was a witness to catharsis.

beautifully written, poignant account of one woman's grief following the death of her mother. It is extensively researched, honest and although it outlines deeply personal experiences, it is written with a real sense of ingegrity and there is no sense of exploitation of the writer's painful situation.

Alsof ik mijn eigen blog aan het lezen was ... Zo herkenbaar in zoveel aspecten. Het continu kapot analyseren van de rouw, alsof dat het beter zou maken. Het missen van rituelen om aan de wereld duidelijk te maken: ik rouw, handle with care. De sfeer van het afscheid nemen. Het kwam erg dichtbij. Ik heb heel veel aan dit boek gehad. Een aanrader voor dochters die hun mama moeten missen.

I read [a:Meghan O'Rourke|57343|Meghan O'Rourke|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg]'s Story's End today.

It is a poignant 3 page memoir of coming to terms with her mother's death. It contains one of the most sincere descriptions of a daughter's understanding of her mother that I've ever read: A mother is a story with no beginning. That is what defines her.. What a wonderful turn of phrase to use to describe the ineffable way that knowing our mother's beginnings (her time before us) slips a way as soon as we think we might be pinning it down!

I will be looking forward to [b:The Long Goodbye|10550342|The Long Goodbye|Meghan O'Rourke|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg|14384851].

Good collection of poems dealing with her struggles with infertility and an autoimmune disorder that had the doctors stumped.

Even though this is only one woman's unique experience of losing her mother to cancer, it explores so many of the universal feelings surrounding the loss of a loved one (especially a beloved mother). It was at times hard to read, and I found myself suppressing my own bubbling emotions to be once again processed at a "better" time. 4.5 years of being motherless has taught me that there is much I really just don't know and may never know, about my mother and about myself and about the universe. It's comforting in a way to hear others similar experiences and understandings.

From by Cannonball Read V review ...

I have to say I feel so weird reviewing such an honest and open book. I feel like if I criticize anything, or don’t have the reactions most people have, that I’m judging the author’s feelings instead of her writing or storytelling. But I’m just going to try to set that aside.

I can’t tell if I didn’t like this book because I listened to the audio version or because it just wasn’t a great book. Possibly it was a combination of both, but I’m feeling a little generous and so will blame most of it on the audio version.

As previously mentioned, I have a job some find odd. Because of that work I have spent some time trying to better understand grief. When I’m writing plans for how to best help people experience an unexpected loss, I want to know as much as I can to avoid increasing their pain. I’ve repeatedly heard and seen that there is no ‘right’ way to grieve, and that while nothing that is said is going to make the person feel as they did before their loss, there are certainly things people can say that actively do not help. When I heard about this book, I thought it would be interesting to get an individual’s perspective on their own grief, especially an individual who is an eloquent writer.

O’Rourke’s mother died after a battle with cancer, and clearly it has affected the author greatly. None of my friends have lost a parent while I’ve known them (a few have lost parents prior to me meeting them), so I’ve not witnessed the grief of a loss of a parent at such a young age first hand (the author was younger than I am now when her mother died, and her mother was in her mid-50s when she died).

O’Rourke did a lot of interesting research to support the book. It is part personal memoir, and part exploration of other explorations of grief, if that makes sense. She details her experience with her mother’s illness, the changes in her mother’s life, and in her own life, while dealing with the reality of a terminal illness. It was refreshing to hear a perspective that involved not just the direct experience with the dying by the attempts to manage one’s personal life. The author experiences different intimate relationships during her mother’s illness and immediately following it, and she describes them in a way that helps provide some insight into her daily life that isn’t just how she is relating to her father and siblings.

One part that I did really find to be well-done was her tackling of the ‘stages of grief’ idea that is so prevalent our society. It seems most people don’t know (I only learned this last year) that the stages of grief are actually meant to address the stages people who are dying go through. Not those dealing with the loss of another person, but those dealing with their impending death.

I really do think that I would have found the book more moving and interesting if I had read it and not listened to it. While it was appropriate, the author’s complete monotone voice throughout six hours of reading made it hard to delineate between the happy, the sad, the informative and the funny. She sounded like a bored senior in high school reading a book report. If I had been reading I could have applied the same imagination I apply to other books when I read them, I and I think that would have been preferable.

Thus far I’ve listened to three other books, and all were (mostly) light, comedic books. This one required a bit more brain power and thoughtful processing of the words, and I wasn’t as able to do that when I was on a run or walking home from work. I’ve learned my lesson and will be sticking to the light stuff for my audio books.