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You Can’t Get A Time Refund
The Villains Who Snapped My Spine: A Memoir tells your story of diagnosing and coping with a rare nervous system disease. Why was this an important book for you to write?
It seemed pertinent to write a hospital journal, even though I wasn’t sure why. I recall thinking I had to record what happened or wait for my literary genius of a sister to pen a version after I’m dead (assuming she gets bored with fiction). Since I’m impatient, I gave it my best shot. If I wasn’t the author, it’d probably be ten times better, an award contender, and eventually adapted to film by the Hallmark Channel.
Honestly, though, if anyone else gets hit with an unexpected health crisis, I’m hoping they might read The Villains Who Snapped My Spine and be inspired—maybe even laugh. In a hospital, you can only read Jalopnik, the Bible, or Twitter for so long, and any medical-themed memoir I picked up made me want to put it down. I’m not really into reading tearjerker sob-smut, so I felt compelled to produce something a little more upbeat.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
My wife, because I want to be with her for a long time. This diagnosis was a stark reminder that life is just a countdown clock to death, there are no guarantees, and you can’t get a time refund even if you have a good credit score or subscribe to Prime.
What is one piece of advice you wish someone had given you when you started the process of getting a diagnosis?
Don’t think you are dealing with something as harmless as everyone else just because there is a 99% chance that the diagnosis won’t be a worst-case scenario.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
Never downplay how bad you feel. Often it’s nothing serious, but sometimes the issue is as life-threatening as playing on a Twister mat over an open grave.
Life is short, so don’t waste any of it working at places like the Post Office or putting off that one crucial thing until tomorrow. Maybe read a memoir.
Author Links: Amazon | GoodReads
The humor-laced and nostalgia-infused debut memoir follows A. H. Nazzareno in his attempt to make sense of a rare diagnosis. Written in a hospital bed and in the immediate weeks following major surgery, courtesy of Dr. Summeroff, an uncertain yet hopeful future emerges from a villain-riddled past.
The Villains Who Snapped My Spine
The Villains Who Snapped My Spine: A Memoir by A. H. Nazzareno recounts the experience of the health crisis that the author suffered, which culminated in 2021. The book begins when he is admitted to the Boston hospital for surgery in June. As he prepares to undergo the operation, he wonders how long he has left to live. The following chapters switch back and forth from his time in the hospital to descriptions of several previous events the author refers to as “villains.” Showing these snapshots of various points in the author’s life over the preceding ten years provides insight into the past to help the reader understand what contributed to bringing him to this current point in his life.
The author of this memoir has a unique and interesting writing style filled with unexpected and often amusing descriptions and metaphors that I enjoyed reading. I liked that he avoided using typical cliches and found original ways to describe events and express his feelings throughout his experience dealing with what he eventually learns is a rare medical condition. The introduction to the book provided hints about the significant event that affected the author’s life, and these hints had me interested in continuing to read to find out exactly what happened. I liked the hopeful tone at the end of the book, especially given the author’s uncertain prognosis.
There were sections of the book that were a little hard to follow for me because the narrative did not always progress in chronological order and jumped forward or backward on the timeline in several places or went off on seemly insignificant tangents. I would have liked a little more clarification at the very beginning of the book, when the author was being admitted to the hospital in Chapter One, as to the details of the surgery he was about to undergo to better understand why he had such a grim view of the outcome. Without this information, I found my focus pulled away from what was happening in the present to wonder about the things that had not been fully explained. It wasn’t until later chapters, after the author went back to describe some of the previous events in the past, that the reader finally learns what had led up to that moment.
The Villains Who Snapped My Spine: A Memoir is a personal account of rare nervous system diseases and what life is like living with this condition. The author is candid, and readers will get to know him and develop an understanding of the life-changing impact this has had on him and others with similar conditions.
Pages: 191 | ASIN : B09ZF1GJTD
LITERARY TITAN 