Bibliofemme Reviews
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State of Happiness by Stella Duffy 
(Published by Virago Press)
Cindy and Jack meet at a party. Good looking, successful and carefree, they fall in love and survive all the usual tests of a relationship including his ex-wife, a cross-country move. But suddenly Cindy is diagnosed with a terminal illness, placing her on a path that no one else can follow.
Stella Duffy's new novel, State of Happiness, does not flinch from describing the mental and physical horrors of illness. But there is happiness and even laughter in this beautiful, heartbreaking love story.
Duffy herself was treated for breast cancer and that experience of serious illness comes through in her un-romanticised view of Cindy's experiences. It is sometimes harrowing to read, especially the details of biopsy as the needle drills through layers of flesh and the horrible side-effects of treatment, but Cindy is a cartographer and she sees the biopsies, scans and x-rays as ways of mapping her own body. This aspect of the character - she's famous for writing a book about mapmaking - gives her a unique worldview as she uses her profession to understand her terminal illness.
State of Happiness is a simply written but poignant document of a relationship, the bad times as well as good. However, the book does come across as an exorcism for Duffy, which sometimes sits uneasily with her the characters. What raises it above the ordinary are her ideas about and descriptions of cartography - not a subject that's normally this interesting - and the ways in which Cindy maps her way though her short life. 
May 2004
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