Halfway to Venus is the story of Sarah Anderson’s life with only one arm. it is a journey of exploration and discovery,through literature and art and real life, concerned with finding out about arms and their significance, about other people who have lost their arms and about phantom and prosthetic limbs. Her experiences range from the sublime to the ridiculous – from visiting Lourdes to attending a ‘one-armed dove hunt’ in Texas.The big struggles about having only one arm have been with other people’s attitudes and this is of course relevant to anyone who is different’. It was this that made her decide to write the book and to follow Robert Lowell’s words: ‘Why not say what happened?’