BOOK REVIEW - Between Two Kingdoms
by Fran Hauser
Guest Editor
Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad
Suleika Jaouad graduated from college, moved to Paris, fell in love and was on her way to becoming a war correspondent and realizing her dreams. Instead, she started experiencing unusual symptoms from unbearable itching to fatigue requiring six-hour naps and high fevers. After multiple trips to the doctor and hospital visits, she was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of 23 and given a 35% chance of survival.
Jaouad takes us through her experience of being sick - from her diagnosis to four years of chemo and a bone marrow transplant. She writes with such precision and detail that it’s sometimes difficult to read. The pain that she (and her family) endured going through this experience is unfathomable. I found myself sighing out loud, my heart broken for all of them.
While the first part of the book is about her illness and ultimate cure, the second part is about her struggles transitioning back into “life’. She is consumed with fear -- fear of the leukemia returning; fear of losing the dear friends she made in the hospital to the illnesses that consume them; fear of not being able to give herself fully in a relationship.
It’s understandable to believe that once a person is cured, they are skipping and dancing out of the hospital fully ready to resume their life. But for many who go through life-threatening illnesses, it’s just not that easy.
One of the things that kept Jaouad sane during her illness was chronicling her experience for The New York Times in a column called Life Interrupted. She received countless letters from readers of the column -- some heartwarming, some inspiring and some thought-provoking. These letters kept her connected to the outside world and gave her writing a purpose. In her attempt to return to the world of the well, she found herself going back to these letters and thinking about these strangers -- the impact they made on her and also wondering: how did they transition back into life?
So she decided to go on a 100-day, 15,000 mile road trip around the country with her new best friend, a scruffy dog named Oscar, to meet some of the people that had written to her, from a teenage girl in Florida recovering from cancer to a death-row inmate in Texas. She learns from each of them what it means to heal and how they think about life.
Her key takeaway from this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. “Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick,” Susan Sontag wrote in Illness as a Metaphor.
This book was so beautifully written and I found myself going into a rabbit hole on the internet wanting to learn more about the author. I discovered two must-watch videos: her Ted talk What almost dying taught me about living and her interview with Elizabeth Gilbert.
PS. On a lighter note, I loved reading about her relationship with musician Jon Batise (they met in band camp when they were teenagers and have been in a serious relationship for ten years ❤️).
Fran Hauser is a bestselling author, startup investor and champion of women. For more of her book recommendations, follow @fransbookshelf on Instagram.
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