The Girl With Nine Wigs: A Memoir, by Sophie van der Stap
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The Girl With Nine Wigs: A Memoir, by Sophie van der Stap
Ebook Download : The Girl With Nine Wigs: A Memoir, by Sophie van der Stap
'It's Saturday and everything is different. No, I didn't go to the market this morning and I didn't have my usual coffee on Westerstraat. And no, I wasn't getting ready for a new semester at college. Next Monday, January 31st, I have to admit myself at the hospital for my first chemotherapy session. For the next two months, I'm expected each week for a fresh shot of vincristine, etoposide, ifosfamide and loads more exciting abracadabra.'Sophie is twenty-one when she is diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of cancer. A striking, fun-loving student, her world is reduced overnight to the sterile confines of a hospital. But within these walls Sophie discovers a whole new world of white coats, gossiping nurses, and sexy doctors; of shared rooms, hair loss, and eyebrow pencils.
As wigs become a crucial part of Sophie's new life, she reclaims a sense of self-expression. Each of Sophie's nine wigs makes her feel stronger and gives her a distinct personality, and that is why each has its own name: Stella, Sue, Daisy, Blondie, Platina, Uma, Pam, Lydia, and Bebé. There's a bit of Sophie in all of them, and they reveal as much as they hide. Sophie is determined to be much more than a cancer patient.
With refreshing candor and a keen eye for the absurd, Sophie van der Stap's The Girl With Nine Wigs makes you smile when you least expect it.
The Girl With Nine Wigs: A Memoir, by Sophie van der Stap - Amazon Sales Rank: #1112088 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-09-29
- Released on: 2015-09-29
- Format: Kindle eBook
The Girl With Nine Wigs: A Memoir, by Sophie van der Stap Review
“The author, now healthy, renders her tale with a poignant awareness of the joy that is possible even in the most dire circumstances. Readers will swiftly be drawn into this beautifully written story of a brave and quite fascinating young woman.” ―Publishers Weekly
“An extraordinary book from an extraordinary girl.” ―Marie Claire (Germany)
“[Sophie's diary] will give you goosebumps.” ―Elle Girl (Germany)
“The grandeur of this book does not rest only in the description of pain that Sophie suffered but also the courage with which she suffered it. What Sophie van der Stap has written is truly a masterpiece; she has managed to seize the lightness in the gravest of situations.” ―Der Spiegel (Germany)
About the Author SOPHIE VAN DER STAP was 21 years old when she was diagnosed with cancer. The Girl with Nine Wigs is the memoir of a girl struggling to survive but even more to live, through her nine invented characters. The experience changed her life, and Sophie has worked as a writer ever since. She has published her first novel, And What If This Were Love, and is currently working on her second. She lives in Paris, France.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful. A brave woman, an ordinary memoir By RobynJC Sophie was barely out of her teens when she started feeling off - run down, achy, with night sweats. One doctor after another couldn't figure out what was wrong, but everyone was stunned when she was finally diagnosed: a rare cancer that had spread extensively throughout her body. The survival statistics were grim and suddenly Sophie was looking at more than a year of chemo, extended hospital stays, and a life that seemed to be shutting down just as it was starting to open up.Of course, Sophie survived her disease. This book was written ten years after the diagnosis, drawn from a combination of the journal she kept at the time, and her reflections now, years later. I find it a bit difficult to review a book like this, because how can you give a negative review to a young woman's bravery under incredibly difficult circumstances? So let me be clear, I 'm not reviewing Sophie as a person. She seems delightful and strong. And she's a decent writer, also; the book flowed along.But... it didn't really resonate for me. There are a number of "I survived my illness" memoirs on the market, and all writers have to find a way to make theirs stand out. The angle here is the wigs that Sophie chose: when she was feeling sickly and weak, she discovered that putting on different wigs gave her different kinds of courage. One wig made her bold, one was practical, one encouraged her to dance, one made her feel like a sex kitten, etc. It's a nice idea. And I like the concept that you can "put on" courage when you need it most. But - that's sort of a good essay; it doesn't really hold up as the frame for an entire book. And I guess that's my criticism overall. It feels like a good essay that was fluffed out to manuscript length; literally, especially in the second half of the book, we're just reading pages and pages of journal entries that don't do much more than record "here's something that happened today and here's how I felt about it." By the second half of the book there were no new insights and no new developments, plot-wise.Thankfully and mercifully, Sophie's treatment was successful and without incident - this is a blessing for Sophie as a person, but it removes some story elements from the book. Late in the book, she introduces a new character - a woman with a terminal diagnosis, who knows from the beginning that she will not survive the disease - and it's possible that this could have been an interesting arc, as Sophie moves towards life and another woman moves away; but this character comes in so late and has such a brief stay, that it feels like another way to make the book longer, as opposed to a meaningful story. By the end, I was quickly shuffling through pages, as my interest had waned.So - I like Sophie. I admire her courage and her humor, and she can write well. But as a work of memoir, this did not resonate as well for me.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Facing down cancer with full heads of glorious hair By N. B. Kennedy Sophie van der Stap has written a luminous account of her battle at a very young age with a rare form of cancer. A 21-year-old college student when she is diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a particularly virulent form of cancer, Sophie is plunged into the terrifying world of the gravely ill. The hospital, not the college campus, becomes her world. "For a week I lay there in my white room, in my white bed, in my white hospital gown, surrounded by white, white, white," she writes.Sophie's monochromatic world explodes with color when three weeks into her treatment her best and dearest friend takes her shopping at a theater supply store for wigs to cover her head that has been robbed of hair by chemo. Expecting to see the kind of awful "beehive" wigs she has seen at other shops, she is delighted to encounter heads of witty, playful hair -- short red hair, long blonde locks, a shiny white bob. Over time, Sophie acquires nine wigs, each of which she affectionately names: Daisy, Sue, Blondie, Barbie, Platina. The wigs not only help her face her ordeal with courage, they provide a window into who the adult Sophie might be. "I feel almost lucky that I can wear different wigs and try out different personalities. That I can somehow figure out who I am underneath," she writes.Ms. van der Stap writes with clarity and simplicity and large doses of humor. Even writing at the age of 32 years old today, she remembers what it was like to be so young when her world was upended. She swoons over "Dr. McDreamy," she blares the Rolling Stones to cover her anxiety, she watches "Desperate Housewives" with the nurses, she gives cancer the finger (in a mirror) as she begins her battle.Ms. van der Stap doesn't gloss over the pain, the nausea, the terror, the daily humiliations of being a cancer patient. And she is an extreme cancer patient: fifty-four weeks of chemo followed by radiation. Yet it's very telling that as an epigraph to the book, she chose a quote from the Greek poet, C.P. Cavafy: "As you set out for Ithaka / hope your road is a long one / filled of adventure, full of discovery." I was glad to go along on this young woman's journey, and I think you will be, too.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Courageous cancer-survival memoir By Paul Allaer "The Girl With Nine Wigs" (original title "Meisje met negen pruiken" published in 2006 in the Netherlands) is the debut memoir from Sophie van der Stap, who finds out, at age 21, that she has cancer, and not just any cancer, but a rare cancer form (the technical term being 'rhabdomyosarcoma', which is a rare malignant tumor involving striated muscle tissue). The memoir details how Sophie copes.Couple of comments: first, this book is now almost 10 years old, and has been a runaway success in much of Europe (it even was made into a movie in Germany in 2013 called "Heute bin ich blond"). Why it has taken this long to get the book published onto the American market, I don't know, but better late than never I suppose. Second, the author does a wonderful job explaining to us the use of the (eventual) nine wigs in total, which in essence act as/allow her to live different personalities, depending on the mood and the overall well (nor not so well) being that she is. "Before long, I come home with Blondie, a short and sexy blond bob. She's my only wig so far made out of real hair. Blondie makes me feel like an independent woman, even if the opposite is true." Along the way, we start to understand the anger, the frustration, and of course the fear (of dying) that the author goes through (the book covers roughly a period of 18 months). This does not always make for easy reading, to be honest. But in the end, one simply is in awe of the courage and the determination of this young woman.Interestingly, in this 2015 edition (which sports a brand new post-scriptum by the author, dated June, 2015), the author feels compelled to post this Note to the Reader at the beginning of the book: "The events in this book took place prior to Lance Armstrong's admission of doping. While I do not condone his behavior, I continue to admire him for what he has overcome, for being a cancer survivor", wow. All that aside, "The Girl With Nine Wigs" is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
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