Sarah Ruhl

With poignancy and power, Smile helps us all to find ways of expressing our internal truth. It helped me to both learn and grow

Gloria Steinem, author of My Life on the Road

Sarah Ruhl has written a remarkable book. Smile is at once a gripping story and a profound exploration of the mysteries of illness. I know of nothing like it

James Shapiro, author of Shakespeare in a Divided America

Ravishing ... that rare and gorgeous melding of gemlike, literary insights, raw honesty, heart break and radiant wisdom. It took my breath away. For real

V (formerly Eve Ensler), author of I Am an Emotional Creature, The Vagina Monologues and The Apology

Profound and necessary. I adore this book

Mary Louise Parker, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Mr. You

Beth Henley, author of Crimes of the Heart

Ruhl proves that even life at its most mundane can be fascinating. This incredibly inspiring story offers hope where it's least expected

This book serves as a welcome invitation to worry about it all a little less, and smile a little more

Extraordinary... smart, quipping, pacy... a practical investigation that explores how, when half your face goes on strike, new ways have to be found to do a smile's work

Although we come to know Ruhl's courage, intelligence and humour, Smile seems not really a book about Ruhl herself, or Bell's palsy either, but an appeal for some acceptance of what is, for each of us

The best book I've read in the past year is Smile: The Story of a Face by playwright Sarah Ruhl... intimate and revealing... touched me deeply.

The Story of a Face

'Her story is intimate and revealing about what it is to smile and what it means when you can't' Cynthia Nixon 
 
The extraordinary story of one woman's ten-year odyssey that brought her physical, creative, emotional, and spiritual healing. 
 
With a play opening on Broadway, and every reason to smile, Sarah Ruhl has just survived a high-risk pregnancy when she discovers the left side of her face is completely paralyzed. She is assured that 90 percent of Bell's palsy patients experience a full recovery, like her own mother. But Sarah is in the unlucky ten percent. And for a woman, wife, mother, and artist working in theatre, the paralysis and the disconnect between the interior and exterior brings significant and specific challenges. So she begins an intense decade-long search for a cure while simultaneously grappling with the reality of her new face - one that, while recognisably her own, is incapable of accurately communicating feelings or intentions. 
 
Smile is Ruhl's piercing, witty, lucid chronicle of her journey. She explores the struggle of a body yearning to match its inner landscape, the pain of postpartum depression, the story of a marriage, being a playwright and working mother to three small children, and the desire for a resilient spiritual life in the face of illness. 
 
Brimming with insight, humility, warmth and humour, Smile is a triumph: an intimate examination of loss and reconciliation, and above all else, the importance of perseverance and hope in the face of adversity.

Sarah Ruhl

Praise for Smile

With poignancy and power, Smile helps us all to find ways of expressing our internal truth. It helped me to both learn and grow

Sarah Ruhl has written a remarkable book. Smile is at once a gripping story and a profound exploration of the mysteries of illness. I know of nothing like it

Ravishing ... that rare and gorgeous melding of gemlike, literary insights, raw honesty, heart break and radiant wisdom. It took my breath away. For rea ...

With poignancy and power, Smile helps us all to find ways of expressing our internal truth. It helped me to both learn and grow

Sarah Ruhl has written a remarkable book. Smile is at once a gripping story and a profound exploration of the mysteries of illness. I know of nothing like it

Ravishing ... that rare and gorgeous melding of gemlike, literary insights, raw honesty, heart break and radiant wisdom. It took my breath away. For rea ...

With poignancy and power, Smile helps us all to find ways of expressing our internal truth. It helped me to both learn and grow

Sarah Ruhl has written a remarkable book. Smile is at once a gripping story and a profound exploration of the mysteries of illness. I know of nothing like it

Ravishing ... that rare and gorgeous melding of gemlike, literary insights, raw honesty, heart break and radiant wisdom. It took my breath away. For rea ...

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