On first being given a possible cancer diagnosis by his radiologist, Peter Goldsworthy says it’s as though he’s “on the other end of the telling, for once” but “simultaneously standing aside, watching from an ironic distance”.
Memoir is a self-conscious, reflexive mode by definition but, in The Cancer Finishing School, this feels doubly true. As a “doctor-writer”, Goldsworthy is both physician and patient; observer and observed, all at once. The result is a very personal story told with remarkable objectivity. Part of the treatment for his eventual diagnosis of myeloma involves an autologous stem cell transplant, whereby healthy cells are collected from a donor’s blood or bone marrow, stored, and later returned to them after treatment. This feels like an apt metaphor for the project of this book: Goldsworthy harvests the marrow of his own experience, transplanting it to the page so that it might be put to good use and given new life.
