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Cost of Living: Essays
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About This Book
The searing intimacy of Girl, Interrupted combined with the uncomfortable truths of The Empathy Exams in a collection of essays chronicling one woman's experiences as both patient and caregiver, giving a unique perspective from both sides of the hospital bed. What does it cost to live? When we fall ill, our lives are itemized on a spreadsheet. A thousand dollars for a broken leg, a few hundred for a nasty cut while cooking dinner. Then there are the greater costs for even greater misfortunes. The car accidents, breast cancers, blood diseases, and dark depressions. When Emily Maloney was nineteen she tried to kill herself. An act that would not only cost a great deal personally, but also financially, sending her down a dark spiral of misdiagnoses, years spent in and out of hospitals and doctor's offices, and tens of thousands owed in medical debt. To work to pay off this crippling burden, Emily becomes an emergency room technician. Doing the grunt work in a hospital, and taking care of patients at their most vulnerable moments, chronicling these interactions in searingly beautiful, surprising ways. Shocking and often slyly humorous, Cost of Living is a brilliant examination of just what exactly our troubled healthcare system asks us to pay, as well as a look at what goes on behind the scenes at our hospitals and in the minds of caregivers.
Reviews
"Maloney has an uncanny ability to recall and elucidate moments that couldn't have been very clear at the time ..."
"'Cost of Living' — an indictment of the exorbitant costs of staying alive in America, and the weight of being hounded by a debt that reduces your life to dollars and cents — opens Maloney's debut essay collection of the same name."
"mental health system, clearly depicting an aspect of health care that doesn't currently help people in need ..."
"With subtle wit and moving vulnerability, she explores how survival is dependent on capital, offering a unique perspective on the American health-care system ..."
"It's an effective move, as some of the most gripping and wrenching descriptions are those that show readers how the various medications she took steal her sleep, the enamel of her teeth, and more ..."
"Maloney comes at these injustices not with fury but with a flatness that almost seems determined to avoid feeling at all."
"They start with a question and work things out on the page."
"The effect of the list is almost hypnotic; it's a stunning essay that puts into sharp relief the cost of trying to feel better in a country dedicated to capitalism ..."
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