One of Time’s Top Ten Graphic Novels of the Year • Slate.com’s Medical Book of the Year • One of The Wall Street Journal’s Five Best Books on Living with Illness • Finalist, Books for a Better Life • Finalist, National Cartoonists Society Graphic Novel of the Year
“One of the powerful revelations of Cancer Vixen is [that] cancer isn’t just an individual diagnosis; it has a social dimension that can affect patients as much as the therapies they choose . . . Marchetto gives us a vibrant, neon chronicle of her fears, her search for understanding and her efforts to cope with a diagnosis that arrives as she’s planning her wedding. Oh, and there’s plenty of attitude . . . A triumph of imagination and spirit.”
—Los Angeles Times
“The tone is Sex in the City in this memoir by New Yorker cartoonist Marisa Acocella Marchetto about her triumphant battle with breast cancer. Illustrated with wit and charm, fashionista Marchetto packs her story full of details about love, her mother, health insurance and shoes.”
—Chicago Tribune (Editor’s Choice)
“Marchetto’s illustrated chronicle [of her battle with breast cancer] is as much about the support and love she received as it is about her fight against the disease. Cancer Vixen is definitely an encouragement tool for women who are waging the same battle.”
—npr.com
“My favorite medical memoir of the year was Cancer Vixen, a graphic novel by New Yorker cartoonist Marisa Acocella Marchetto. At 43, Marchetto is just three weeks shy of her wedding day when she finds a lump in her breast. Her cartoon self is sucked upside down into a black hole. Abnormal cells are illustrated as little green monsters sticking their tongues out and giving her the finger. She is terrified her fiancé will leave her. Marchetto chronicles her experiences with doctors, medical jargon, needles, chemo cocktails, and radiation with a directness and wit that struck me as wholly original. The illustrated format lightens the tone and creates a structure in which wry punch lines can proliferate without seeming glib. The book is most of all a love story, spiked with jealousy, tenderness, and great Italian cooking. It’s remarkably playful, but the passions and struggles are not cartoonish at all.”
—Slate
“At 43 years old, Marchetto was three weeks away from marriage to the man of her dreams, her career as a cartoonist for Glamour and The New Yorker was on track–and, oh yeah, her health insurance had just expired–when she got the bad news: She had breast cancer. Her comic memoir details the many indignities of her treatment (the breast that turns blue from a needle puncture, the holistic doctor who treats her with corny music and a few of his own self-help books) and how her illness affected friends and family. Final word: Marchetto tackles the issues with humor and a big heart.”
—Rocky Mountain News
“Even before its release, Marisa Acocella Marchetto’s Cancer Vixen was a huge hit in the blogosphere, generating a tsunami of buzz . . . What makes it work is the funny, disarming superheroine of the title–Marchetto herself, determined to be a Vixen and not a Victim, and living an ordinary life (considering that she is a cartoonist for the New Yorker and Glamour, as well as the now-wife of a food celebrity, Silvano Marchetto, who drives a Maserati and has published his own cookbook) and struggling with ordinary problems as she comes to grips with a potentially life-threatening disease. Among the central characters is the adorable Silvano, proprietor of the celebrity-studded West Village restaurant that bears his name, Da Silvano. Also irresistible in her own way is Marchetto’s domineering mother, or ‘(s)mother,’ as she is affectionately dubbed. On the fringes are legions of hip Manhattan BFFs (best friends forever)–fellow cartoonists, editors at big fashion magazines, ‘It’ Manhattanites of every stripe. Because of course this isn’t really an ordinary life: it’s a life lived always on the fringes of celebrity, a sort of ‘Cancer in the City’ for the modern woman. Marchetto dabbles in Kabbalah and alternative therapies, visits a quack, grapples with a ‘rival cartoon girl,’ adores expensive shoes, and suffers the insolent barbs of the shallow supermodels who flock to Da Silvano. Cancer Vixen is tremendous fun, bubbly and sweet and optimistic. Like her husband, whose favorite phrase seems to be ‘che bella giornata!’ (what a beautiful day!), Marchetto counts her blessings and loves her complicated, high-heeled life.”
—The Seattle Times
“Bold and brazen . . . [Marchetto] chronicles her experience [fighting breast cancer] in a series of cartoons that will make you think–and yes, even laugh.”
—Bookreporter.com
“This talented cartoonist’s memoir of her battle with breast cancer is good enough that it’ll have you standing outside the running shower in the morning, unable to put it down.”
—washingtonpost.com
“Spitfire cartoonist and self-described ‘fashionista’ Marisa Acocella Marchetto was on a career high and shopping for a wedding dress when ‘D. Day’ (that is, diagnosis day) arrived, sucking her into a black hole of anxiety. Cancer Vixen is living proof that even angst, quacks, fear of no-hair days, know-it-all friends, and embarrassing side effects can be good for a laugh–and that sometimes you have to raise a little hell to heal.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine
“There are already more than enough Web sites and books and pamphlets and classes about breast cancer to keep you totally well informed (and totally terrified), but few of them are any fun. Not so Marisa Acocella Marchetto’s graphic memoir, Cancer Vixen. Marchetto, a contributor to The New Yorker, manages to be unflaggingly perky as she tells us the story of her cancer, starting with her diagnosis three weeks before her wedding. She gives us haunting drawings of cancer’s victims, whom she places up in the clouds, still grouped in the ‘cancer clusters’ in which they died. (Remember Love Canal?) But mostly, Marchetto’s cartoons in this book are ebullient: cancer cells under the microscope are little green circles sticking out their tongues and giving you the finger; the grim reaper wields a vacuum cleaner; her higher self is a floating, one-eyed yogi with amazing abs. But Cancer Vixen isn’t all silliness. There are important lessons about treatment options and insurance (women–like Marchetto herself–who are uninsured at the time of their diagnoses have a 49 percent greater risk of dying from breast cancer) . . . [Cancer Vixen is] visually invigorating and unflinching . . . Marchetto’s sunny drawings comfort and amuse while providing a beneficial education on cancer’s dark details.”
—Ariel Levy, The New York Times Book Review
“New Yorker cartoonist Marisa Acocella Marchetto’s trip to the altar took a detour when she found a lump in her breast. Cancer Vixen, a canny melding of Sex and the City and “Wit” in illustrated form, follows her evolution from stiletto-heeled satirist to self-possessed survivor–and wife of restaurateur Silvano Marchetto.”
—Vogue
“The great thing about writing a cancer memoir in graphic form? Not only can you talk about your cancer, but your cancer can talk back. In this smart, funny chronicle, Marchetto’s cancer cells, drawn like delinquent happy faces, stick out their tongues and flip her the bird. In 2004, Marchetto, 43, is a sharp-witted cartoonist who gives more thought to hair and shoes than to her health insurance, which she’s let lapse. Newly engaged, she is stunned to learn that a pearl-sized lump is malignant. Full of wisdom and anger, her story reveals how, through a lumpectomy, chemo and radiation, she learns what’s really important: friends, family, [and] her adorable husband.”
—People magazine, four stars
“Which pair of shoes should you wear to your first chemotherapy session? That’s one of the pressing issues dealt with in this funny, eye-opening and moving memoir. Weeks before she’s due to (finally!) get married, the 43-year-old cartoonist-fashionista discovers a lump in her breast. Using a lipstick-color palette, Acocella Marchetto keeps the book upbeat. As good as the best Sex and the City episodes, Cancer Vixen becomes a lesson on how staying fabulous can help save your life.”
—Time magazine
“Within the pages of The New Yorker, among the drawings of nebbishy professor types and slugs who crack wise, lurk cartoons whose characters aren’t like the others. In Marisa Acocella Marchetto’s panels, women wear clothing recognizable to Vogue readers and make comments like, ‘So what if he doesn’t know Ovid? He knows Ovitz.’ But Marchetto’s autobiographical debut isn’t an illustrated tale of sample sales and parties (OK, there are some parties). Three weeks before her wedding, she finds out she has breast cancer . . . Equal parts painfully touching and hilariously funny, there’s nothing about Cancer Vixen that makes breast cancer seem like a picnic. Marchetto’s attitude, however, is a different story. She wears blue metallic snakeskin lucite pumps to her chemo sessions, and she cracks jokes about the chicness of head wraps at fundraisers–proving that an uplifting cancer story doesn’t have to be soppy.”
—Bust magazine
“New Yorker cartoonist Marisa Acocella Marchetto’s [life changed] the day a doctor found a lump in her breast. Cancer Vixen, her inspiring comic-book memoir, cannily plays with the idea of cancer survivor as superhero. Marchetto . . . learns to live in the moment with the help of glamorous New York BFFs, as she calls them . . . But the presence that looms largest . . . is Marchetto’s overexcitable mother.”
—W magazine
“Cancer Vixen is a visually electric read, but it’s also a good old-fashioned story of triumph–starring a New York woman with great shoes, fast-talking friends and the most honest dialogue I’ve ever read about what it’s like to face disease. Cancer Vixen is 100% unputdownable. This is NOT a treacly survival story, NOT an expected woe-is-me tale–it’s a lively, surprising, and completely absorbing story of single life, love, best friends, clothes, work travails, New York apartments, late dinners . . . and, yes, cancer. I just love this book.”
—Cindi Leive, Editor-in-Chief, Glamour
“I salute Marisa Acocella Marchetto and women like her who not only have the courage to battle breast cancer, but are able to do it with such unflagging optimism, creativity and humor. Marisa’s willingness to share her experiences in such an honest, personal way is an incredible inspiration–whether you have experienced breast cancer yourself or love someone who has endured its many challenges.”
—Evelyn H. Lauder, Founder and Chairman, The Breast Cancer Research Foundation
“Cancer Vixen redefines the memoir by expanding what’s possible in the genre. Incredibly bold and brave, inspiring and absolutely packed with life-force, it’s one of the freshest works of autobiography I’ve read in years. Part love story, part survival guide, Cancer Vixen is for everyone who would never read a cancer book. And it’s for everyone who believes they’ll never fall in love. Here’s proof that sometimes the worst thing that can happen to us is actually the very best thing, in disguise.”
—Augusten Burroughs, author of Running with Scissors and Dry: A Memoir
