So Lucky
by Nicola Griffith
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. 192 pages. $15.
NICOLA GRIFFITH is a British expatriate who lives in Seattle with American writer Kelley Eskridge. She’s an acclaimed novelist who has won awards for her fiction in various genres, including for Hild, a well-reviewed historical novel about Saint Hilda of Whitby, a key figure in the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon peoples to Christianity in the 7th century.
Her new novel So Lucky, a slim book about the progress of a little-understood chronic disease, multiple sclerosis, seems unexpectedly narrow in scope when compared to previous efforts. However, the subject matter is partly autobiographical. Nicola Griffith has been living with this condition for years, since her diagnosis forced her into a career change: from self-defense instructor to full-time writer.