Lopsided: How Having Breast Cancer Can Be Really Distracting

A hilarious and wickedly irreverent look at life with cancer "Lopsided" is not your ordinary cancer memoir. Meredith Norton chronicles every step of her experience, starting with her bizarre symptoms while living in Paris to moving back home to California and living with her compulsive parents and their five television sets. Irreverent and incredibly funny, Norton rails against self-pity and victimhood and rants about the innumerable copies of Lance Armstrong's cancer survival book pressed on her by well-meaning family and friends. Alongside the harrowing portrait of her treatments, Norton offers equally amusing memories from her offbeat life. We see her childhood time during a somewhat racist ski trip, a family reunion at a Florida alligator farm, and her life in a tree house with a neighbor, who, despite being vegan, hates mice enough to taxidermy them into miniature versions of racecar drivers, Jesus, a UPS delivery man, and Sally Jesse Raphael. Like David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs, Norton's razor-sharp wit is at once riotous and excruciating. "Lopsided" is the remarkable debut of a masterful humorist.

Review :
a truly elegant memoir?Norton is terrific at narrating the physical slapstick of battling this disease. But She's even better on the arrogance and pretense the cancer reveals?she's fresh and adorable, and you hope she sticks round to produce at least another dozen surly, lovely books.? ?"O, The Oprah Magazine" ?By including touches of wit and sarcasm, Norton strikes a successful balance between light and heavy, keeping her audience consistently engaged.? ?"San Francisco Chronicle" ?If you seek to be moved ? to laughter, that is ? look no further than newbie Meredith Norton's memoir, "Lopsided: How Having Breast Cancer Can Be Really Distracting." Her victimless approach doesn?t sugarcoat the experience but rather brings to light hilarious universals (e.g., constant Lance Armstrong mentions from friends and family).? ?"Daily Candy" ?"Lopsided" is fantastic. I read it in one sitting, and it completely swallowed me up. For one entire day, a girl I don?th aa]a truly elegant memoira]Norton is terrific at narrating the physical slapstick of battling this disease. But Sheas even better on the arrogance and pretense the cancer revealsa]sheas fresh and adorable, and you hope she sticks round to produce at least another dozen surly, lovely books.a a"O, The Oprah Magazine" aBy including touches of wit and sarcasm, Norton strikes a successful balance between light and heavy, keeping her audience consistently engaged.a a"San Francisco Chronicle" aIf you seek to be moved a to laughter, that is a look no further than newbie Meredith Nortonas memoir, "Lopsided: How Having Breast Cancer Can Be Really Distracting," Her victimless approach doesnat sugarcoat the experience but rather brings to light hilarious universals (e.g., constant Lance Armstrong mentions from friends and family).a a"Daily Candy" a"Lopsided" is fantastic. I read it in one sitting, and it completely swallowed me up. For one entire day, a girl I donat know and never met became my best friend, and I have not been able to stop thinking about her since. LOPSIDED is powerful, funny, courageous, and moving, but most of all, it is human.a aLaurie Notaro, author of "The Idiot Girlsa Action-Adventure Club" a...wise, humorous memoir...Her disarming frankness renders the book less a cancer survival guide and more a lovably unfiltered e-mail from a hilarious friend. There has not been a funnier, more honest cancer account in recent memory.a a"People" aI hope to encounter this clear, incisive, highly amusing voice again. Soon.a a"Orlando Sentinel" aNorton is one plucky dame, and she displays a sharp eye for the human condition...[she]callsherself a storyteller, and the tale she has crafted from a life-altering event is indeed hard to put downa a"Kirkus Reviews" a["Lopsided"] crackle[s] with heartfelt intensity and irreverence.a a"Booklist" aHer tone may be facetious, her language colorful, and her distractions gritty (readers will gasp at the taxidermy activities of a former neighbor), but her view of cancer (funny and irreverent) and her place in the world (she found herself awaiting for a miracle. Not a miracle to save my life, but the miracle to make something of ita) will make readers stand up and cheer. Highly recommendeda]a a"Library Journal" aMeredith Norton gives marvelous new meaning to the phrase aa sick sense of humor.a And her lippy, lovable, sharp-shooting story will find your heartstrings by way of your funny bone. This isnat Chicken Soup for the soul; itas Tabasco. Fans of David Sedaris should fall to their knees and worship this book. LOPSIDED is, hands down, the best new memoir that Iave read in ages.a a Koren Zailckas, author of "Smashed"