Body, remember

by Kenny Fries

Body, Remember is a deeply affecting memoir that revolves around a mystery: at age 35, poet Kenny Fries wanted to discover what could be learned about the history of his body, and the map of physical and psychic scars with which he had lived since infancy. He began only with a description his father had given him. At his birth "each leg was no bigger than his finger; each leg was twisted like a pretzel; each leg had no arch to separate leg from foot; each leg was dimpled above what would have been my ankle.". Fries turned to long-buried medical records, reconstructing a record of his disability just as his body had been reconstructed over countless surgeries. He unearthed family secrets and looked again at the echoing memories of past relationships. In Body, Remember we meet and come to know intimately Frie's observant Jewish family and neighbors in Brooklyn; his doctor, who broke with colleagues and insisted that he needn't undergo amputation of both his legs; the brother who resented