A Life Less Convenient: Letters to My Ex
Recently I stole a book from NL.

NL has a stack of new books by his computer that seem to arrive weekly if not daily in the mail from publishers, literary agents and authors for him to review on his Paperback Writer blog. The books seem to rotate in no particular order in the stack as they arrive and get shuffled around. He gets to all of them eventually.

Usually I check out the stack of books when I’m at his house to see what new books he’s gotten offering up my opinion of: “Oh this book sounds interesting.” Or “That cover design is cool.” Sometimes I sit and read passages from the various books awaiting review. I don’t usually ask to borrow books before he’s reviewed them on Paperback Writer, as I don’t know where they are in rotation or how soon he’s promised the author the review.

That is until I walked into NL’s house one day and saw A Life Less Convenient: Letters to My Ex by Jennifer Clare Burke laying on top of his stack of books.

“What’s this?” I asked picking up the book to examine it.

“Oh, that came in the mail today from an author who writes for the Nervous Breakdown blog.”

“Hmmm…”

The cover design was amazing. Erotic yet filled with angst. It’s what drew my eyes immediately to the stack of books. And then there was the title: A Life Less Convenient: Letters to My Ex. I was intrigued. I thumbed through it and saw great artwork.



Some artwork featured in A Life Less Convenient: Letters to My Ex by various artists

I turned it over and read:

“A Life Less Convenient: Letters to My Ex is a collection of fictionalized short stories told in the form of letters to loves lost during the onset and daily complications of chronic illness. Each letter details the emotional and physical realities of a couple dealing with illness, and the transitions that inevitably occur as they learn to navigate through the bodily changes.

The book portrays the complex, often ambivalent relationship of the body in love and in disease through both pictures and text. …The ugliness of the disease is offset with moments of transcendence and fidelity as she struggles to own her new body.”

“I want to read this!”

“Can I take this book and read it?” I asked.

Without waiting for a response, I put A Life Less Convenient: Letters to My Ex with my purse and took it home with me when I left.



I began reading it that night and I couldn’t put it down. I was engrossed through each letter to the ex. Jennifer Burke writes about chronic illness and relationships with such honesty as the narrator of her letters takes the reader through the changes in her body and how those changes affect her relationships. This story is not about pity. No, rather I found myself admiring the narrator’s ongoing struggle to know or own her ever-changing body through illness and maintain a sense of normalness in her relationships. Even when normal for her isn’t quite ‘normal’ because of concessions she has to make for her body’s needs and disabilities.



Jennifer Burke’s A Life Less Convenient: Letters to My Ex reminds us not to take our body or love for granted.

I may not know what it is like to suffer with a disease like Lupus but I can relate to the physical and emotional struggles of the narrator as Jennifer Burke’s letters to her ex make the trials and symptoms of Lupus seem universal through relationship issues. In fact the narrator’s journey for me, validated some of my own emotional choices and physical disabilities and even gave them a voice.

Here are a few examples from Jennifer Burke’s A Life Less Convenient: Letters to My Ex:

In A Letter to My Ex about Gifts the narrator on a rare occasion allows her lover to touch her hair. Something so simple that a lover would normally do, running his fingers through his lover’s hair…

“Access to hair. You didn’t mean to ask for the impossible. I was no Samson. I knew that for a fact. I had already lost my hair and gained strength instead when it happened, but not without feeling crushed and disoriented. You didn’t really know what was lost to me back then. You couldn’t know, not now, not after playing with over two feet of hair locked securely in my scalp.

You didn’t know what was in my closet. Literally. On the floor toward the back, a spherical, silver pot lined with plastic sat in dust bunnies. It contained the hair that fell out of my head in 1998.

…It was not another symptom.

It was my hair.”

The hair in the pot and the hair on her head was her hair. And having lost it once, the narrator did everything possible to keep it part of her body. Even withholding it from her lover.

This letter illustrates the narrator’s struggle to own her body and how her changed body affects her relationships. When I read this letter, I understood. I understood the struggles the narrator was living that I could never imagine.

In A Letter to My Ex about Maps the narrator compares physical problems with her heart caused by DHEA a Lupus medication, to ‘breaking up’.

“I think it should be like the bank, sort of. I’m willing to risk giving you my heart. You can keep it as long as I say I’m depositing it with you, but I think I should get it back, every piece of it, when I decide I want it back. I want all of my heart back, every ounce of artery and sinew. I’m not sure whether it has to be in the same shape – I’m not clear on that detail, but you can’t have any of it just for yourself after we decide that this can’t work anymore.

Truthfully, I don’t know the shape of the heart, so I wouldn’t be able to appraise its condition upon return.

…I got back my whole heart from DHEA, every ounce, just like I thought I should. My economic theory had worked.”

Even though the narrator couldn’t map the shape of her heart, she had got it all back from the Lupus medication and she felt the same policy should apply to relationships.

We never seem to get our whole heart back at the end of a relationship. I thought as I read this letter and I understood the narrator’s desire for a map of her heart. After my divorce I drew a map of my own heart and had it tattooed on my body so I wouldn’t forget its shape.



And in A Letter to My Ex About Marathons the narrator argues with her ex because she’s running now that her legs work again. He believes she shouldn’t run, she should take care of herself better.

“This is the starvation mindset: you live through a famine once, and forever you horde food and wonder if you’ll enjoy another meal tomorrow.

…You keep thinking that you get to keep your body. That your body stays with you just because you’re stuck inside it, you don’t get to keep anything, not really. Nothing’s a given.

…I didn’t get rid of my walker for a reason. My legs can leave me again.”

The narrator insisted on using her legs, on pushing her legs now that she had them back again. Her lover didn’t understand.

I did. I still have my walker. I know what its like to not have use of my legs. To not be able to walk for an extended length of time. I push myself every week in physical therapy because I want to keep my legs. Like the narrator, I know my legs could leave me again at any moment.

This letter especially made me realize how my physical problems with my knees have affected my body, my relationships, and how I compensate for my disabilities in an attempt to maintain a sense of normalness in my own life.

Jennifer Burke’s A Life Less Convenient: Letters to My Ex is a must read that will change the way you think about your body and your relationships.



You can purchase A Life Less Convenient: Letters to My Ex at Merge Press. Buy a copy. You won’t be disappointed! I absolutely loved it!

Visit A Life Less Convenient website and Myspace and leave a comment for Jennifer Burke.  posted by Matildakay at 9:27 PM