Montreal-based writer and cartoonist Gabrielle Drolet’s debut book Look Ma, No Hands: A Chronic Pain Memoir is an earnest and intensely honest exploration of art and chronic pain. In 2021, at the height of the global pandemic, Drolet began experiencing pain that made it difficult to use her hands. This pain would continue to worsen as she navigated freelance writing gigs, graduate school, multiple cross-provincial moves, and the horrors of the Quebec medical system. Amidst all the uncertainty of diagnosis and pain management, Drolet paints a picture of her life with wit, humour, and deep self-compassion. Reading Look Ma, No Hands felt like catching up with an old friend – you pick up right where you left off, no detail too small or uncomfortable to divulge. 

Drolet’s memoir is structured in a seamless cadence of personal essays that detail her experiences with chronic pain in young adulthood. She discusses having to relearn tasks that once came naturally to her, how the onset of chronic illness affected her romantic relationships (e.g., feeling burdened with the weight of making her pain digestible for others), and how navigating her own illness gave her more insight into the experiences of others. 

Her essay “Dave” brought me to tears. There’s something in the way she writes about Southern Ontario – the sense of community, the effects of global warming, and the desire to stay in a place you love – that found its way into my gut. Her writing and voice, particularly in this essay, have the overwhelming ability to situate her reader within a tangible sense of place. I could see the farmland stretching to the horizon, the Amish buggies on the road, and the quarry in my mind’s eye. What is perhaps most moving about this essay is Drolet’s newly contextualized understanding of Dave, her ex-partner’s dad – a beef farmer and private investigator. Looking back post-diagnosis, she reflects on why he couldn’t let his arthritis keep him from a life and a place that he loved. Drolet writes about the people in her life with a tenderness that almost allows the characters to speak for themselves. 

Look Ma, No Hands is more than a memoir; it’s a meditation on accessibility, bodily autonomy, and the complexities of living – dating, putting IKEA furniture together, moving cities – with chronic pain. Drolet’s writing is tonally consistent, vulnerable, and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny. I simply couldn’t get over the part in “Barbecue Leftovers” where she asks a well-meaning medical student whether she would be allowed to keep her rib bone if she opted for “the surgery.”  Rather than fixate on the looming reality of chronic pain or the procedure itself, Drolet instead focuses on the surreal, almost comical possibility of shaving her rib bone into “a small bespoke spoon.” She has the uncanny ability to find humour and levity in unexpected, quotidian places.

If you’re looking for a book that will have you laughing out loud while quietly reminding you that you’re not alone, this is it. Though Drolet discusses the difficulty of moving from typing to voice-to-text, it is evident that she has found her voice anew. Coupled with her illustrations – previously published in The New Yorker, The Narwhal, and The Globe and Mail – Drolet offers us a vivid memoir, opening her life to us with candour and mirth. mRb