I Live a Life Like Yours: A Memoir

I am not talking about surviving… I am not talking about becoming human, but about how I came to realize that I had always been human. I am writing about all I wanted to have, and how I got it. I am writing about what it cost, and how I was able to afford it.

Jan Grue was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy at the age of three and began using a wheelchair not long after. In this lyrical memoir, he uncovers what it means to have lived, and to continue to live, in a body that the world struggles to accept as normal.

Writing with humour and bracing frankness, Grue draws from art, fiction and criticism to forge a literary language that can tell his story. He revises the clinical definitions of his childhood medical records, undoing their definition of his body as defective. He writes movingly of his love for his wife Ida, and the endless possibilities that he perceives in their young son. Unflinching yet always compassionate, I Live A Life Like Yours is a groundbreaking memoir that fiercely and tenderly rewrites our understanding of the body, relationships and family.

‘Humbling, dark, bright, defiant, generous and…revolutionary’ - David Mitchell

‘An elegant meditation on what it’s like to be a body that does not resemble most other bodies… A tart and spare palate cleanser’ - Vulture