At first sight, you could be forgiven for thinking that Halfway to Venus, a “one-armed journey”, was going to be a “poor me” book. But what makes it so different is that, despite having had her arm amputated due to cancer when she was 10, Sarah Anderson is at pains to tell us that she’s … Read more
Just before her tenth birthday, Sarah Anderson complained of a lump in her left arm. An hour later, she was sitting in the doctor’s surgery (a telltale sign that this was 1957 and not 2008). By the evening, her parents had been told by the doctor that their daughter was most probably suffering from a … Read more
A request for assistance cutting up food leads to a jaw-droppingly ignorant comment from an airhostess, “Do you mind being my baby?” Thus Sarah Anderson felt compelled to write about what it’s like to live with one arm, in a two-armed world. You could say Sarah isn’t the luckiest person in the world. Her left … Read more
Tuck your thumb between your second and middle finger, sit down in a Turkish cafe, and those you are with may either thump or laugh at you. You’re making as obvious and vulgar gesture in their culture as giving them the finger. This trait of mine is something that runs in families, I now learn, … Read more
I must declare an interest at the outset. Thirty or so years ago I went out, or walked out (or whatever the phrase is), with the author, until, that is, the night when, for reasons I have never been able to establish, she hit me over the head with a stainless-steel electric kettle. You may … Read more
As a child, writer Sarah Anderson had her arm amputated. Her stiff-upper-lip family never spoke of the trauma – and nor did she. Denial came at a cost, she tells Cassandra Jardine Shortly before Sarah Anderson’s 10th birthday, the first lump was found just below the elbow of her left arm. For the next seven … Read more