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Sorensen’s new novel The Vitals is narrated by her own organs during her cancer treatment a decade ago. But as she prepared to promote it, she found herself ‘back in cancer land’Get our weekend culture and lifestyle emailIt was a plot twist no one saw coming, least of all the author. Last month Tracy Sorensen was preparing to launch her highly anticipated second book, The Vitals – a playful and unconventional cancer memoir/novel written from the viewpoint of her organs – while dealing with a niggling winter cough.The Miles Franklin-longlisted author and academic assumed she just had a chest infection. “They whacked me straight in for a chest X-ray and that was it, I was back in cancer land,” she says from her home in Bathurst during downtime between infusions of chemotherapy and a targeted “biological agent” to treat lung cancer. It’s a recurrence of the advanced primary peritoneal cancer she had – and vanquished – in 2014. “Despite everything I know about cancer, having written a whole book about it, having immersed myself in it, it still feels shocking,” Sorensen says. “[After] 8.5 of remission … it was absolutely the last thing I was expecting.” Continue reading...