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Lisa Roney presents us with a memoir that not only breaks down diabetes from a medical perspective, but also gives a deeply personal view of the disease. "Sweet Invisible Body: Reflections on a Life with Diabetes", is beautiful in it's honesty. It progresses through Lisa's life, starting with the discovery of the disease at 11 years old, and on through college and into her professional life; Lisa uses diabetes and her struggles with it to frame her journey. Lisa is able to describe her disease in detail, using the doctors definition, and then going deeper to give the reader a poignant view of what that prognosis means to her. In doing this she gives herself great credibility, and allows her readers-specifically those with diabetes-to find common ground. I, myself, don't have diabetes; but in growing up with a Grandfather that did, I was able to understand his life more fully. While Lisa spares nothing in describing her struggles with diabetes, she does so without evoking sympathy. She’s able to achieve this by being so raw, so open, with all aspects of her life. She encapsulates the struggles of childhood diabetes: shoots, weight gain, diet restrictions; and then on into her adult life. She encapsulates her struggles in her childhood through her loss of the sweets that so define southern cuisine: “At ten, chess pie was my triumph. At twelve, a now impossible past. My mother taught me to make whole wheat bread instead.”. While this line doesn’t ask the reader to mourn for her, or to feel sorry that she was 12 and had a restrictive diet, it beautifully illustrates the loss she experiences; I mean, what twelve year old wants to eat whole wheat bread? Lisa’s descriptions move from medical and complicated, to flowing and lovely. She writes something that is poetic. She works past base observations and looks deep within herself to pull meaning from her experiences. When contemplating her relationship with food in the section “Hunger and Plenty”, Lisa describes her longing for sweets, “Suddenly, before my eyes, Picasso’s creamy whites turned into vanilla, his glossy browns into chocolate and cinnamon, the bright purples and reds of the thirties paintings into fruit flavors.”. Her cravings turn into an obsession at times, and she struggles with her love hate (okay, mostly hate) relationship with food. I was able to find something deeply human in her desires and necessary deprivations. She is faced with something that moves from the normal female food obsessions, and becomes a medical malady. It is both heartbreaking and triumphant; Lisa is able to handle her disease with such a skillful eye, and such a poetic hand that anyone that has ever struggled with any aspect of their life is able to find common ground. From a writers perspective, it is easy to see that Lisa is successful in her novel because she approaches her disease with a contemplative eye. She weaves poetry in and out of her medical diagnosis and allows herself to be objective in her view of who she is, and who diabetes forces her to become. Though the novel encompasses her life, she stays true to her theme; that diabetes, no matter how hard she tries to fight it, is a part of her. And, while it is a part of her, Lisa makes it clear that the disease does not define her. She presents the reader with a characterization of herself that is strong, and yet not afraid to be weak, not afraid to break down, and not faultless. She is three dimensional and accessible; a person that has triumphed. Roney, Lisa. Sweet Invisible Body: Reflections on a Life with Diabetes. Henry Holt and Company-New York, 1999. Print.

Obra maestra. Es más: obra universal.