From the author of The Lucky Galah comes an inventive and playful exploration of very human stories from non-human perspectives.
Deep inside Tracy’s body live the organs of the peritoneal cavity.
Ute, a wandering womb.
Rage, an existential spleen.
Gaster, a gleeful gorger.
Liv, a workaholic liver.
But there is also Baby, an ever-growing tumour, and Baby’s child Bunny, whose cells are multiplying alarmingly.
Together, the organs must fight for homeostasis … and Tracy’s survival.
The Vitals is a cancer memoir transformed by Tracy’s creativity and imagination into something far richer and stranger.
Narrated by her internal organs, The Vitals will make you infinitely more aware of the peculiar world inside your body and discover all the hidden parts that make you human.
“Tracy is a paragon of gentle wit and intelligent decency. This is a memoir of cancer survival transformed by imagination into something far richer and stranger,” said publisher Geordie Williamson.
Tracy Sorensen is a writer and scholar. She grew up in Carnarvon on the north coast of Western Australia and now lives in Bathurst, New South Wales, with her partner, Steve. Her first novel, The Lucky Galah, was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2019.
The Vitals, her second novel, is based on her experience with advanced primary peritoneal cancer, a form of ovarian cancer association with a mutation on the BRCA1 gene on the 17th chromosome. She has now been cancer-free for eight years.
The Vitals is published by Pan Macmillan Australia (Picador Australia) and is available from all leading book retailers including QBD Books.
Image: The Vitals – courtesy of Pan Macmillan Australia