LADYPARTS

A bestselling author and former war photographer chronicles a decade of personal traumas by examining the malfunctioning body parts associated with each new upheaval.

Copaken, author of both fiction and nonfiction, reflects on personal crises by connecting bodily scars and their roles in her life. She begins with the graphic story of how, in the middle of a divorce, she suffered a ‘ “vaginal cuff dehiscence’: the clinical name for uh-oh, the stitches where they sewed up the top of your vaginal canal have come undone, and now you’re a blood clot howitzer.” The closing image of that section—in a hospital, “bleeding body on a slab, arms spread, wrists bound”—establishes the primary textual metaphor of the suffering female body. The author then explores other afflicted body parts and the troubles that dominated her life. In discussing her uterus, for example, she recalls how a hysterectomy coincided with both the end of her marriage and the death of her mentor and friend Nora Ephron. This was followed by a breast lump and the financial problems caused by marital separation. By 2014, at age 48, after she lost a job and started to date again, Copaken developed the heart palpitations doctors diagnose as PVCs. A few years later, a diagnosis of precancerous cervical lesions put a pause on a newly flourishing romantic life that included sympathetic younger men. The string of overwhelmingly bad luck continued into 2020, when the author contracted Covid-19 while trying to manage a urinary tract infection. Throughout this often overly detailed, highly informative, photographically illustrated memoir, Copaken uses her misfortunes to comment on, among other issues, corporate policies that force working women/mothers out of jobs; income inequality; female sexual harassment; and the many complications of the American unemployment system. The result is a conceptually unique narrative from a talented author that is sometimes undercut by informational excess.

Overlong but sharp and funny and always extremely candid.