Cancer Narrative with a Difference: Elaine Feeney΄s ‘As You Were’

Abstract

Elaine Feeney΄s novel As You Were offers the story of a terminal cancer patient who forsakes any medical treatment. Narrating the final moments of her protagonist’s life, the author breaks with the traditional cancer novel formula in which a bellicose stance is prescriptive. Instead, the heroine’s stay at a hospital ward with other female patients constitutes Feeney΄s point of departure for writing a state-of-the-nation novel. The article discusses how the merging of different literary traditions, such as cancer narrative, literature of witness, or experimental fiction, allows the author to paint a poignant picture of Irish society, in which women, whose rights were historically curbed, empower each other through telling their life stories as well as reclaiming the life tales of their lost sisters. The analysis focuses on metaphors and narrative strategies that customarily underpin cancer stories and which can be identified in the novel. Secondly, the subversion of the cancer narrative is taken under scrutiny to demonstrate the experimental character of Feeney΄s novel. Subsequently, the ethical dimension of storytelling is given critical attention and the work’s status as a state-of-the-nation novel is elaborated on.

Keywords

• cancer narrative
• illness narrative
• Irish literature
• feminism
• trauma