27 Oct / Smile: The Story of a Face by Sarah Ruhl [in Booklist]
*STARRED REVIEW
Best known as a mega award-winning playwright, Sarah Ruhl (44 Poems for You, 2020) is also a MacArthur “Genius,” Yale professor, poet, and author. Her memoir is an utter gift – no superlatives are enough; no review can communicate its resonating efficacy.
Just after Ruhl found out she was having twins, she met her husband for lunch and ended their meal with a prescient fortune cookie: “Deliver that what is inside you, and it will save your life.” Parsing its full meaning would require a decade.
That fall, the day after her first Broadway opening, breakthrough bleeding required bed rest; “boredom and entropy” ensued. Complications didn’t stop, including a supremely rare disease that caused early labor. Both children came out “perfect,” but the next day, the left side of Ruhl’s face fell down: “eyebrow, fallen; eyelid, fallen; lip fallen, frozen, immovable.”
Bell’s Palsy was diagnosed, and although 95 percent got better in a year, Ruhl would have to navigate 10 years of seemingly endless specialists, therapists, and miracle workers to smile again. Recognizing her own self becomes a stupendous, raw, funny, piercing, brilliant journey.
Ciphering her work for the stage, Ruhl makes sure her words on the page are part spotlighted monologue, part family album, part BFF confession, part unguarded reveals.
Indeed, audiences are guaranteed a standing-ovation-worthy production.
Review: “Nonfiction,” Booklist Online, October 22, 2021
Readers: Adult
Published: 2021