Lene Fogelberg

CW/TW: Murder, death, sexual assault

RATING: 3/5

REVIEW: This was…a very strange book. The Lightning Tree is the story of two sisters, Flora and Fauna (*cringe*), who together have been ‘chosen’ to tell the world about the oncoming Natural apocalypse and to tell people that trees are not their enemies…although everything in this book says otherwise. As trees begin killing people everything spirals into madness…

The start of this book was really good. And as the weirdness started to leak in around the edges, I was okay with that for a long while. But in the last fifty pages or so, this book just got really weird. The whole thing about trees killing people to ‘warn’ them really didn’t make a lot of sense and kind of undercut the whole thing. I didn’t hate this book and I don’t think it’s badly written. I think that environmental science fiction definitely has a place but this book went a bit past what I consider “too weird.” Still, will I read the next one? Probably. Make of that what you will but be warned this is one of the weirdest books I’ve read this year by far.

I received this book as a Goodreads Giveaway and am voluntarily leaving an honest review.… (more)

Beautiful Affliction is a stunning debut memoir about a young woman whose fatal congenital heart condition is dismissed by the medical community in Sweden. But, it isn’t only the topic that makes this memoir a page-turner. Lene Fogelberg weaves a riveting story of fear of impending death, invalidated for years as she struggles with daily fatigue, dizziness and shortness of breath. She knows something is wrong and often feels she is going insane while putting up a valiant front for her husband and two little girls. Underlying this daily challenge is the deep love that she and her husband, Anders, share. I felt the love, the frailties, the fears. It’s her prose--lyrical and fluid-- which kept me up way past my bedtime. I could not put the book down and read it in one sitting. She brought me right into her story with ease through her vivid details and genuine voice. It flows seamlessly through rocky terrain and against the backdrop of seemingly impossible odds. Even though I knew she survived, it still kept me on edge.

Her use of flashbacks is very effective as she alternates chapters between her past and her present leading up to the heart surgery that saved her life. This serves to build the tension and kept me highly engaged in the story. The circumstances of her ultimate diagnosis and treatment are nothing short of a miracle.

The beauty of memoir is that we are invited into another person’s story in a way where we can connect with our own story. We are part of the story as we share in the experience, feeling the pain and rejoicing in the triumphs and the gift of life. Lene’s memoir delivers on all counts. A truly beautiful and uplifting memoir, masterfully written… (more)

Have you ever gone to the doctor for something and been dismissed only to later feel vindicated when something was in fact wrong with you? What if you were dismissed for years, despite knowing deep in your bones, that something was not right? Lene Fogelberg knew that she was dying but not one doctor in her native Sweden agreed with her. In fact, she was labeled a hypochondriac, ignored, and finally denied medical leave because no one even thought to truly examine her. And yet she was right; she was in fact dying of a congenital heart disease. Beautiful Affliction is her memoir, of life undiagnosed and of the two open heart surgeries that saved her just in time.

When Lene was small, a doctor listened to her heart and declared that she had a harmless heart murmur, nothing to worry about. Neither her parents nor she saw any reason to disagree with this diagnosis. But despite the all clear on her health, she had strange unexplainable symptoms that increased as she got older. She was cold a lot, always exhausted, and felt like she was having trouble breathing, but if these were constants in her life, they were unremarkable for the most part and she just lived her life as best as she could. Lene met Anders when she was only twelve and he was fourteen. They were a couple from then on, marrying young and eventually going on to have two daughters. Lene suffered terribly following each pregnancy, uncertain why pregnancy and childbirth took such a toll on her. Although she mainly ignored the state of her health, having been told time and again that nothing was wrong with her, Lene never believed doctors, always certain that there was a monster inside her just waiting to be exposed. When Anders was transferred to the US, Lene did her best to make the move a smooth one for him and their small daughters despite her overwhelming and constant weariness. In order to get a driver's license she had to submit to a physical and it was through this that her heart murmur, alarming in its magnitude, was discovered. Lene had an abnormal aortic valve, one so constricted that each doctor she saw was amazed by the fact that she was still upright. She needed immediate open heart surgery to save her life.

The memoir starts out with the Fogelbergs' move to Philadelphia and what leads up to Lene's diagnosis alternating with chapters of pieces from Lene's past and childhood, her early years with Anders, the agonizing difficulties of her her pregnancies, and the complete, constant dismissals by the Swedish medical professionals whenever she tries to uncover the riddle of what is wrong with her. The different chapters are formatted differently, with the past being all italicized while the current day moving forward chapters are all in regular font, a questionable editorial decision. If only a formatting decision marks the difference between the chapters for the reader, the memoir should be narrated differently.

In both time periods of the memoir, Fogelberg's regret for her inability to do everything she thinks she should be able to do and her desire for forgiveness for her perceived weaknesses shines through. She is not only physically affected by this hidden disease but she is emotionally gutted by the visible results of it. Her struggle is heart felt and painful to read and she allows the reader a very intimate insight into her very deepest fears and hopes. She is terrified of leaving her small daughters motherless and is filled with sorrow at the thought of leaving Anders long before either of them are ready. The continual repetition of how she's feeling and her symptoms beats a steady and unchanging refrain, like the constant beating of her diseased heart. Fogelberg is a poet and her language is indeed very poetic, metaphorical, and vivid. The calcified valve is discovered about midway through the memoir and after that point, the confusion and rush of an impending major surgery takes over as Fogelberg writes in short, almost disjointed snippets reflecting her own jagged mental state. Only when her survival is assured does the writing steady out again. And only after all is said and done and the memoir's final page has been read does she take to task Sweden's socialized medicine and the way that it almost fatally failed her. Fogelberg offers this lyrical memoir as a testament to miracles, to the fragility of life, to the importance of intuition, and to the power of love and support.… (more)

I want to say that Lene is a very lucky woman that she is alive today to share her story. What an amazing story it is. Lene was born with a heart murmur that left untreated for many years lead to a fatal congenital heart disease. One that left Lene trapped in her body with the heart of a ninety year old woman. I was intrigued by Lene's story because my sister's oldest son had to have heart surgery when he was just a baby. He was born premature at 6 months old. Barely weighing over 2 pounds. He had to stay in the hospital for about 3 more months. He is now 13 years old and you can not tell that he was ever born premature.

So reading this book I could imagine what it could have been like if the doctor's had not caught my nephew's heart condition in time. The way that this book was written with the present and then the different formatting and font of Lene's thoughts was nice. I really felt like I got to get close to her this way. When Lene would have an attack with her heart and she felt trapped in a bubble, there was a time or two where I too felt as if I was trapped in that bubble with all of the oxygen sucked out of the room. I found this book to be a very well written read.… (more)