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May 18, 2012
News offers dose of comfort
Robyn Michele Levy was nominated for a 2012 Leacock Award.
LAUREN KRAMER
There’s no denying that Vancouver author Robyn Michele Levy has had a difficult time over the past five years. Between learning she has early-onset Parkinson’s, coupled only months later by a diagnosis of breast cancer, the 48-year-old was well overdue for some good news. So, when her memoir, Most of Me (Greystone Books, 2011), was nominated as a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for humor writing in April, it was a timely dose of comfort. As it turns out, the award went to Patrick DeWitt for his book, The Sisters Brothers, but the nomination itself was breath of fresh air for Levy.
“My mom had just passed away two weeks prior ... her name was Lea Levy, so this was a lovely gift of comfort and acknowledgment,” said Levy, who never quite intended to write a book in the first place. Around the time she was undergoing her surgeries, her friends and family were so concerned and worried for her that she decided to send them quirky, weekly e-mail updates, “to let everyone know what was going on and to try and cheer them up,” she said.
The e-mails landed in the inbox of a publisher who was a friend of a friend, and the result is Levy’s memoir, wherein she incorporates some of that correspondence, but mostly writes about her experience over the course of treatment for breast cancer and Parkinson’s, two summers ago. It’s heavy subject matter for the humor-writing category, but it’s precisely Levy’s dark sense of humor that lifts readers from the doldrums of her illnesses, lightens the mood of her book and instigates unexpected bursts of laughter throughout.
“I’m an artist and I began to apply my creative perspective to some of the experiences I was going through,” she explained. “I was among the 50 percent of Parkinson’s patients with depression and, as I began treatment for that, my sense of humor came back.”
Humor fills Most of Me with laugh-out-loud moments that likely would not appear humorous out of context – which is why they are hard to quote here – but, in the memoir, add mirth and insight to Levy’s perspective. Readers are taken into doctors’ offices, into private conversations with friends and into Levy’s marriage, playing witness to her struggle and how those around her participate, offer comfort and deal with the uncertainty she endures.
“The crux of the story is about relationships: between myself and my family, caregivers, relatives, strangers and neighbors,” she said. “It’s really about community and how much we depend on each other.”
Though the core content is quite serious, Levy added that her intention is for Most of Me to be seen as a funny book, as a spirit lifter.
“The nomination lifted my spirits so much,” she said. “Even as I was writing it, I had in the back of my mind that it would be so great to be nominated for this award. It was a secret little dream and that part came true, which was wonderful.”
Lauren Kramer is an award-winning writer in Richmond. Read her work at laurenblogshere.com.
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