Imagine your body being Murphy’s Law official stomping grounds, or as the author explains it to the doctor who is astounded by the abnormally fast clotting properties of her blood, “Whatever should not happen will.”

Set in the blue-collar environs of the rural Northwest, Lessons in Taxidermy is Bee Lavender’s autobiographical account of her unaccountably bad luck with disease. The ailments come early (rotted teeth from a misguided diet of apple juice in lieu of mother’s milk) and often (degenerative cysts growing in her jaw at nine-years-old; cancer by 12). These are only highlights of a terrible litany.

I was used to being alone within illness. The world recedes and other people are just phantoms, whether they are in the room or halfway across the world.

Deserving more than anyone of having herself a never-ending pity party, Lavender doesn’t. Her matter-of-fact prose is as detached and spare as the persona her years of illness have sculpted, which makes the book, at times, seemingly lacking in emotional depth. However, this mirrors the tunnel vision that allowed her to cope. Amazingly, nowhere does Lavender speak – at any length at least – about becoming depressed. At an age when most kids were hanging upside down on monkey bars, her life was hanging by a thread, reduced to the simple antipodes of survival, life or death.

Through it all, Lavender manages to finish college, have a kid, get a job and a steady male companion (marriage must not be her bag). And, refreshingly, she doesn’t treat these accomplishments as any huge, big deal. Her nonchalance resides in her longtime wish to just ‘be a normal girl, with regular skin and ordinary clothes, commonplace hobbies and predictable friends.’ Even if she isn’t.

My primary identity is found in my body, in the scars, in the injuries and injustice and disease and decay. My genetic code conveys the simple truth that I’m a freak: no other information about me is relevant.

The fact that I am alive is a daily revelation, but it is necessary to do more than just survive.

Despite the physical Grand Guignol that life has lavished upon her, Bee Lavender’s story is a testament to guts, endurance and an indomitable will to not succumb to the maladies that are laying siege to her body. You think nobody knows the trouble you’ve seen? Read this, and stop whining.