Mail on Sunday 01/02/09
Church Times 26/09/08
SAGA Magazine - July 2008
HALFWAY TO VENUS by Sarah Anderson (Umbrella Books, £12.99)
At the age of 10, Sarah Anderson lost her left arm to cancer. She refused to consider herself a victim and her candid memoir is a fine testament to her courage and success.
Conde Nast Traveller - June 2008
So I want to catch up on two jewels missed earlier this year. Chief among these is Sarah Anderson’s Halfway to Venus: A One Armed Journey. Anderson lost an arm as a young girl; as an adult she set up the Travel Bookshop, in 1979. These and other life experiences have fuelled a wonderful book that, in the course of the author’s search for the ‘lost’ arm, takes in a trip to Lourdes and a one-armed dove hunt in Texas. Halfway to Venus is also a fascinating cultural history – a look at how arms are portrayed in history, literature and art – and an investigation through phantom limbs and prosthetics into ideas of absence and difference.
The Week 03/05/08
Sarah Anderson had what was perhaps the epitome of the “stiff-upper-lip” childhood, says Cassandra Jardine in The Daily Telegraph. The owner of London’s Travel Bookshop and her siblings saw their parents for just half an hour a day, and were otherwise brought up by nannies who frowned on any show of emotion. Aged nine, the young Sarah developed a rare cancer in her arm. Eventually, doctors advised amputation. Her mother signalled the news by taking her alone into the drawing room. And making a chopping motion with her right hand. After the operation, her missing arm was rarely even mentioned. She was expected to cope, uncomplainingly, and she did – but it hasn’t been easy. “It’s much more traumatic than losing a leg,” she says. “Legs area useful for getting about but arms are our link with the world. We use them to touch, hug, gesticulate.” Yet despite the difficulties she has faced (described in a new book, Halfway to Venus), Anderson, now 60, doesn’t entirely regret the attitudes that prevailed when she was ten. “I’m terribly glad I didn’t lose my arm in these politically correct times,” she says. “I hate terms like ‘upper-limb amputee’, rather than ‘one-armed’, and I dislike compensation culture. It’s better to get on with things.”
Sunday Times 27/04/08
In 1957, aged 10, Anderson’s childhood was abruptly brought to an end when she was diagnosed as having cancerous lumps in her arm. A prominent surgeon amputated the limb, a procedure that, Anderson later found out, may not have been necessary. Halfway to Venus tells of her struggle to accept the loss of part of her body and to live with the prejudices of other. Mixed with these personal recollections are an exploration of amputation in history and art, and an examination of the ideal form as represented by the Venus de Milo. The author is fascinating about the ‘nerve storms’ that affect her phantom limb, and about her body’s memory of amputation (her wound is ‘metallic-edged’, she says). She is riveting, too, on such disturbing subjects as acrotomophilia – being aroused by the idea of having sex with an amputee. That this book had to be self-published (it was deemed too difficult to categorise) is testament both to her determination to expose taboo and to her own integrity.’ Freya-Grace McClelland.
