Inspiring, instructive memoir for cancer patients and their loved ones.
In this debut memoir developed from her blog, a California attorney shares her transformative journey following a midlife cancer diagnosis.
In 2011, Mock’s life was humming. A successful San Francisco lawyer, she was enjoying her “midlife crisis convertible,” her 50th birthday gift to herself, and studying Italian to further enjoy her trips abroad. Then she got a curveball: a little lump on her neck led to a diagnosis of stage 4 ovarian cancer. The news was a game-changer: some friends disappeared, and her relationship with girlfriend Andrea eventually fell apart. Mock started a blog (from which this book is developed) to share her emotions and experiences, particularly her determination to battle and live beyond her illness. While undergoing a hysterectomy and many rounds of chemo, Mock avoided Internet research, encased her head in deep-freeze “Penguin Caps” to prevent hair loss, and regularly exercised. She emerged from her treatment with clear medical scans and a fresh perspective, with work/life balance a new priority. She participated in LiveStrong biking events (despite mixed emotions about Lance Armstrong) and, best of all, met beautiful, supportive Carole, who soon became her wife. Today, Mock continues to have worries—including a 2013 spike in abnormal scans—but she decided “to pursue joy, not gloom,” fully aware that “staying true to the wisdom gained from having cancer is an ongoing process.” Mock wrote this lively, motivating memoir from the cancer trenches, providing many black-and-white photos of herself that reflect her philosophy of bringing positive energy to a cancer diagnosis. She offers numerous examples of such behavior not only in her own actions, but from those around her, including from her Italian teacher; the book’s title comes from an English translation of the latter’s remark, “Non tutto il male viene per nuocere.” While some readers may question Mock’s emphasis on exercise to battle disease, she discusses this idea within the context of describing her entire course of care.
Inspiring, instructive memoir for cancer patients and their loved ones.Pub Date: July 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-49-176708-5
Page Count: 186
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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