A gracefully written account of one woman's physical and spiritual struggle to surmount childhood cancer, permanent disfigurement, and, ultimately, ""the deep bottomless grief...called ugliness."" After surviving relentless medical horrors -- the removal at age nine of half her jaw due to Ewing Sarcoma, two and a half years of chemotherapy, and two years of reconstructive surgery -- Grealy's true battle begins when she looks in the mirror and finds herself trapped behind a face, in a ""self"" that she hates, and for which her peers cruelly punish her. Grealy endured insults and ostracism as a teenager in Spring Valley, N.Y. At Sarah Lawrence College in the mid-1980s, she discovered poetry as a vehicle for her pent-up emotions. During graduate school at the University of Iowa, she had a series of unsatisfying sexual affairs, hoping to prove she was lovable. No longer eligible for medical coverage, she moved to London to take advantage of Britain's socialized medicine, and underwent a 13-hour operation in Scotland. She finds solace and inspiration in the company of horses and other animals, and as a young adult, she cultivates an enriching inner life through reading, and later writing. Grealy now lives in New York City. Her discovery that true beauty lies within makes this a wise and healing book. http://bookstorecommunity.com/autobiography-of-a-face/