Mary Sue has MS

I should feel bad writing this, discovering that the author has passed on, but I'm a sticker for honesty. Being the same age and having the same disease as Walker should have had something in the book resonate within me, but no. It was a "white saviour" story, where the author is very pleased with herself for the tiniest of offerings she bestows in the "less fortunate". The author was painfully unaware of her elevated position in life, and much as she liked to refer to herself as a "writer", this blissful ignorance bled through everything she did. My favourite cringey passage described her "having a self-centred conversation with herself" during an addicts anonymous meeting. Not only was her prose incredibly clumsy, she acted as if the three dollars she put into the basket to fund the refreshments was amazing generosity and not a fortunate twist that allowed her to (gasp) not have to start from scratch in her give a gift a day goal. She completely ignored the stories her fellow addicts were sharing - but her daily mission had been saved, hooray!
All too often, the reality of incurable illness is more like her Cockney friend Ingrid's mother: a poor woman suffers through domestic violence, only to be handed the further blow of a diagnosis. Not everyone gets to surround themselves with New Age well wishers and get a book contract - they die in anonymity and agony, with no one even giving them a handful of seashells.

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