Review: The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan

By Emily Yocco

Kelly Corrigan’s The Middle Place will make you want to trust in the memoir again. For starters, it’s 100 percent true (listen up, James Frey), but more importantly, it’s believable. When it comes to writing, Corrigan smartly opts for happy rather than sappy, and her choice makes for an approachable and authentic debut novel on a potentially delicate subject – cancer.

Corrigan doesn’t bother with a flowery prologue that introduces her as the book’s protagonist and breast cancer as her opponent. Because her father is as integral to this book as she is, Corrigan’s memory begins as such. “The thing you need to know about me is that I am George Corrigan’s daughter, his only daughter” is her unceremonious yet adequate introduction. By laying this notion on the line so plainly, Corrigan reveals the most significant layer of both her personality and her book – family.

In fact, that’s what “the middle place” is all about – still wanting to belong to your childhood family while inevitably starting one of your own as an adult. By alternating concise, to-the-point chapters between present-day and childhood, Corrigan confirms that she is, in fact, stuck in this ambiguity – a gray area where half of your being is fighting to keep the parents who defined you alive, and the other half realizing you will soon bury this someone to whom you’re “attached in so many places you almost fall in after them.”

What makes Corrigan’s storytelling so elegant is ironically, her candor – it’s obvious she doesn’t care to embellish her experiences or sound more righteous than she truthfully is. So what if she considers her husband her hero for calling a three-year-old a “fucker” after the child declared Kelly a “monster” upon seeing her bald, chemotherapied head? She’s human for coming “THISfuckingCLOSE to throwing (her) drink against the living room wall” when she discovers her dad has bladder cancer. While some might argue that Corrigan’s honest writing comes off as amateur, in truth it only makes her more accessible to her audience.

Although Corrigan must grapple with the idea of losing her father to cancer while she is fighting that same beast, she never lets herself forget that life has been good to her – she has a loving husband, two beautiful daughters and a close-knit family who generally get along. By underlining these cherished aspects of her existence, Corrigan creates a new “middle place” for her readers – a place where they can be happy while reading a novel with cancerous undertones. She makes it okay to laugh about “The Guess Jeans Fight of 1984” (a teenaged Corrigan v. her mother) and then choke up as she hypothetically plays out her father’s funeral, just to convince herself she could survive it.

Simply put, Kelly Corrigan’s writing is real – but her obvious talent transforms the normality of a story like The Middle Place into a cathartic experience. Living with Corrigan through the pages of her book will make you wish your dad, like Corrigan’s, called you “Lovey” and you called him “Greenie.” It could even make you feel like you’re stuck in a middle place. But in the end, like Corrigan, it might help you grow up a little, too.