RaveJewish CurrentsBoyer’s engagement with her sources ensures that The Undying, though it is a narrative in the first person, is only minimally autobiographical ... What stands out about The Undying, several decades later and in the wake of a dramatic proliferation of cancer memoirs, is the affect and intensity of its linguistic virtuosity ... Perhaps the real problem with the symbolic language around cancer is its insistent sameness: pink ribbons signify breasts, breasts signify women. The sheer abundance of Boyer’s metaphors, by contrast, captures something important about the persistent wiliness of the disease.
