Harriet Alida Lye - Natural Killer: A Memoir

Advance Praise for Natural Killer

The writing in Natural Killer contains the strange whimsy only the voice of a survivor can have. Recounting her cancer, Lye recaptures the state of grace teenagers live in even in the darkest moments. She then brings us close to the absurdity and wonder of childbirth. In succinct and addictive and generous prose she details the perils and miracles of living in a human body, on the days when it is out to kill us and those when it is making a whole other life inside us.

Heather ONeill, author of The Lonely Hearts Hotel and Lullabies for Little Criminals

Never have I read a more moving book on the fragile filament of life, the bond between people who love one another and struggle to find the words to express that love. The words are here, so wise and specific and drawn from the inward part. Harriet Alida Lye has no truck with fantasy or faith or folderol. She is a star witness to the bloom of life that surrounds death, and her work demands access to our unsentimental hearts.

Michael Winter, author of Into the Blizzard

Natural Killer is less a cancer memoir (though it is that) as a wise and heart-affirming reflection on the ties that bind us to one another: on motherhood but also daughterhood, control and surrender, and the bodys limit experiences. Harriet Alida Lye brilliantly weaves her materials together, from firsthand memories to medical records, scenes of the body ravaged and scenes of the body creating, in a truly original work of autobiography.

Lauren Elkin, author of Flneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London

Natural Killer is a breathtaking memoir full of clarity, courage, and wisdom. In opening up her transition from child to mother, Harriet Alida Lye shows how fear and love can become unifying forces in a body that both takes and gives life. This story will stay with me for a long time.

Claire Cameron, author of The Last Neanderthal

A gripping memoir, told in an honest unassuming way that is inspiring and heartbreaking at the same time, and leaves you with renewed gratitude for life. I cried, I laughed, and I ached. The way Harriet weaves in her parents perspective gave me goosebumps as a mother. I read this book in one night!

Samra Zafar, author of A Good Wife

What a rare thing to read a book that makes you pause in reflection on nearly every page. Natural Killer is a remarkable story of an inspiring family that is both heartbreaking and hopeful. Harriet Alida Lyes writing, intimate and subtle, asks profound questions about life, death, hope, and trust that made me grateful to have spent time in her beautiful mind. This work, crafted so thoughtfully, will stay with me for a very long time.

Ashley Audrain, author of The Push

Harriet Alida Lye takes the enormous cruelty of indiscriminate disease and creates something truly beautiful and deeply moving. A book about the terror of death that is brimming with the warmth and vibrancy of life.

Stacey May Fowles, author of Baseball Life Advice

In this generous book, Harriet Alida Lye opens up her lifeand her bodyto us. She guides us through the peaks and nadirs of human experience with her sensuous prose, her keen eye for the beauty that exists even in the terrible moments, and, above all, her boundless, fierce love.

Anna Maxymiw, author of Dirty Work

Everything about this book is exceptional: the writing, the potency of its images, the portrayal of two lives linked across time, the writer herself. I cannot recommend this enough.

Nafkote Tamirat, author of The Parking Lot Attendant

ALSO BY HARRIET ALIDA LYE

The Honey Farm

Copyright 2020 by Harriet Alida Lye

McClelland & Stewart and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House Canada Limited.

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisheror, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agencyis an infringement of the copyright law.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication data is available upon request.

ISBN: 978-0-7710-4923-1

eBook ISBN: 978-0-7710-4924-8

Notes: while this is a work of non-fiction, it is also a work of memory.

The version of Alcestis quoted from was translated and adapted by Ted Hughes

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999).

Names of patients and medical staff have been changed.

Cover watercolour by Five Seventeen and Youn Joung Kim

Watercolour is based on an image of natural killer cell leukemia, courtesy of

Leibniz Institute, DSMZ-German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures GmbH.

Cell line: KHYG-1, DSMZ no.: ACC 725.

Emoji One [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

McClelland & Stewart,

a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited,

a Penguin Random House Company

www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

v5.4

a

To my parents.

Natural Killer Leukemia is the rarest and worst malignancy.

INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CASE REPORTS JOURNAL

I have tried in my way to be free

LEONARD COHEN

I got a bad cold in March and it never properly went away. It was 2002: I was in grade nine, and on March Break vacation with my parents in Niagara Falls. In the hotel swimming pool, I felt as though I was dissolving. As though Id already disappeared. I could see people, flesh all around me, and I could feel the tepid chlorinated water on my skin, but I had the distinct feeling that I was no longer there, that these observations were coming from an objective, all-seeing place. I dont mean this spirituallyit felt factual. Like Id forgotten I was alive.

I was in my first year in the drama program at a performing arts high school in suburban Toronto, and for the end-of-year play, I was cast as one of three girls playing the titular Queen in Euripedess Alcestis. Our teacher, the director, had chosen to have the actors who played Alcestis also play the part of Death.

When I awake in the body of Alcestis, I would say as Death, she dies, and then Id pull back the hood of my black cloak and stand up as the self-sacrificing Queen.

Do you know the story? Beloved King Admetos is destined to die but his servant, the god Apollo, negotiates with Death to have a substitute die instead of the King. But nobody in the entire kingdom agrees to take his place. Not even Admetoss elderly parents, two walking cadavers, will die to let their young son live. Finally, his wife Alcestis volunteers. Admetos suddenly regrets his cowardice and says hes now willing to die if his wife can live, but by this point, her offer cannot be retracted. Alcestis is taken away by Death.