It’s Probably Nothing

With one in every eight women getting breast cancer, bookstores and libraries are full of serious cancer memoirs, making Myers’s darkly comic entry about her diagnosis and recovery a much-needed addition to the list. Myers chooses poetry (accompanied by sardonic illustrations) to convey her state of mind and mood. A young mother in her 40s when she first gets the disturbing news, her response is a poem entitled, “Oh Fuck! I have cancer!” after she finds nothing that addressed such issues as “[do] silicone boobs wobble during sex or [do] reconstructed nipples chafe.” Learning the doctor can’t save her breast, she decides to have a double mastectomy. Although Myers acutely feels the loss of her breasts and is jealous of women who will know what it’s like to feel their nipples get hard from air conditioning, she is excited to go to a lingerie store with her new 36Bs. “It’s astonishing how much better / everything fits (and looks) / when you have the boobs of a nineteen-year-old.” Throughout, Myers demonstrates that courage and fighting to stay positive helps her reframe her cancer story from one of disfigurement to “becom[ing] reconfigured,” an experience that will be instructive to many. Agent: Sarah Funke Butler, Funke Literary. (Oct.)