A thinly disguised advertisement for the author’s business. Buyer beware.
In this fictionalized case study, a woman goes to the Medical Rejuvenation Institute to improve her recovery after breast cancer.
Sarah Harrison, 30, grows up in a family that’s “one of the more affluent cornerstones of the community.” After college, family connections land her a plum job at Vanity Fair, where she soon becomes one of its “most celebrated Associate Editors.” She and her tall, handsome husband, Edward, a financial planner, weather his colorectal cancer scare, have two delightful children, and enjoy being a New York power couple. When Sarah develops breast cancer, she undergoes the standard lumpectomy, radiation and chemo, with good results. Her doctor recommends follow-up care at the Medical Rejuvenation Institute; debut author Briones, a pulmonologist and medical doctor, is its founder and president. The institute aims “to extend [Sarah’s] life as a cancer survivor and significantly impact her quality of life.” (The institute’s actual website tempers this goal, stating that it’s “not a treatment program intended to treat…any disease.”) Briones provides full particulars of Sarah’s care program, such as laboratory tests to perform, supplements to take and their dosages, and lifestyle recommendations. As a novel, this story is clumsily told and betrays an unattractive preoccupation with wealth as virtue. Of course, prospective clients would need wealth to follow the Institute’s regime: The cost of a nutritional evaluation, for example, “is high, but might be covered by insurance”—might be, and that’s before purchasing the long, long list of nutritional supplements and other recommended equipment, such as an “earthing sheet.” Just as she skims over the cost, Briones skims over controversies about these treatments. The book’s alternative medicine claims are complex and legion, but many of the conclusions and interventions have little evidence-based medical support. Briones includes a list of references; however, without in-text citations, it’s up to the reader to track down which references are meant to support which claims.
A thinly disguised advertisement for the author’s business. Buyer beware.Pub Date: Dec. 28, 2014
ISBN: B00CG6F97K
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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