A homespun story that suffers from a lack of depth, aggravated by a distracting, unnecessary theme.
A mother and daughter’s memoir that uses gardens as an analogy for life.
Co-authors Hammerberg and Arksey share their story of coping with Hammerberg’s stage IV breast cancer diagnosis, navigating treatment and emerging into the encouraging light of remission. Choosing to write the story jointly could provide a unique service to others in similar situations. Unfortunately, the authors insist on clogging the plot with the clumsy application of a gardening theme. Peppered with personal anecdotes about trips and pets, the book makes a nice family keepsake but does not rise to the level of professional writing. One yearns for the authors to dig deep and share their story in an unvarnished, detailed fashion, including advice that did and did not work for them during Hammerberg’s treatment, such as packing a cooler of snacks for long chemo sessions. Instead, the mere recitation of events and burbling praise for positive thinking prevent the reader from gaining real insight into what it is like to walk the path of cancer diagnosis and treatment. Arksey offers a nice passage describing feeling needed while helping her daughter through cancer and taking joy in their new, mature relationship. But she then retreats to a bare telling and platitudes until the afterword, where she writes eloquently about how the experience changed her and how she uses it to move forward in her senior years. Likewise, Hammerberg writes of taking time to enjoy friends and family and taking pleasure in new traditions like homemade Christmas gifts. She, too, offers a glimmer of insight in her afterword, where she writes about living with cancer instead of dying from it. By this point, however, the reader has been inundated with gardening parables and cutesy stories about the cat.
A homespun story that suffers from a lack of depth, aggravated by a distracting, unnecessary theme.Pub Date: July 11, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4196-6953-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Here's a fascinating look at cutting-edge scientific research—the identification of cancer's origins—from a man who has been near its center for nearly three decades. Weinberg (Biomedical Research/MIT) has the advantage of having actually worked with or competed against many of the scientists who are the stars of his story. Beginning in the 1950s, the search for the causes of cancer began to focus on two areas: the body of evidence implicating various possible carcinogens (tobacco smoke, asbestos, etc.) and the equally strong evidence that many cancers could be caused by viruses. The discrepancy was not resolved until it became clear how certain normally harmless genes (known as oncogenes) can become active and send the cells of which they are a part into cancerous growth. Weinberg gives this discovery full attention, as he does the linked discovery of a tumor-suppressing gene that can be damaged by carcinogens. But his account is most notable for its memorable portraits of the scientists themselves, among them Ernst Wynder, who first established a link between smoking and lung cancer; Howard Temin and David Baltimore, who discovered the mechanism by which retroviruses reproduce; and the brilliant but erratic Sol Spiegelman, himself a cancer victim. Weinberg's knowledge of the key players is matched by his ability to tell their collective story, doing justice to the scientific facts and making their significance clear to the lay reader. He is also eloquent on the politics of science, where the competition for grants and for Nobels is cutthroat. Nor does he ignore the scandals and disasters: Premature announcements of shaky results, grudges nursed for years, careers ruined by botched experiments. As the result of this research, our understanding of cancer has dramatically increased, and new techniques for fighting it may be expected to follow. Scientific history at its most compelling—strongly recommended.
Pub Date: June 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-517-59118-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1996
Articulate feminists of diverse backgrounds share their similar thoughts about menopause as a transforming spiritual experience. Horrigan, publisher of the journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, sought out eight women whose work she admires- -a healer, an English professor who is also a shaman, an anthropologist, a Jungian psychoanalyst and performance artist, an Apache medicine woman, a college dean, a part-Cherokee, part-Seneca songwriter, and a feminist writer—and interviewed them for their views on menopause. Every interview is accompanied by a glowing tribute from the author, who presents her interviewees as remarkable, wise, and deeply spiritual and insightful women, and herself as the novice who gains in wisdom as she listens to them. The women explore the female psyche through visions, parables, ancient myths and legends, and tales of goddesses, archetypes, and matriarchies. The book's title has a mythic ring, but it is a phrase Horrigan devised to evoke a positive image of menopause as a transforming journey out of a time of monthly bleeding into a time of creativity not based on reproduction. Menopause, the reader is reminded often, is to be viewed not as an ending but as a beginning. For women in touch with their spirits, as the author and her interviewees presumably are, menopause is a time not simply of biological change, but of spiritual transformation marking the beginning of the most powerful years of a woman's life. Devotees of Joseph Campbell will find much that is familiar here, and the author's advice to follow one's heart echoes Campbell's counsel to follow one's bliss. Inspirational reading for New Age feminists, especially comforting to those approaching menopause.
Pub Date: July 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-517-70386-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
