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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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