A compelling, thoughtful take on a very real women’s health issue; both confidently sexy and lighthearted at the same time.
When a 25-year-old go-getter is unexpectedly hit with major news about her health, she’s forced to look at herself from a new perspective and ask what she (and her body) really wants.
Lacey Whitman is a planner. Her job as a fashion trend forecaster requires her to live 10 steps ahead of now. So it’s very much like Lacey to schedule a genetic screening to rule out certain health concerns. When that screening reveals she has the BRCA1 gene mutation, the “breast cancer gene,” her carefully forecast future comes to a grinding halt. Lacey’s mother died from breast cancer at age 31, so somewhere deep down, she knew this outcome was possible. It’s a sobering thought: No one likes to think it could be them. Lacey’s priorities shift from working on her startup project, Clean Clothes, "outfits that are on trend and ethically sound," to researching the pros and cons of a mastectomy—the Big M. This research opens doors to a community of women with the same gene mutation and whose outpouring of body positivity encourages Lacey to take charge of her situation. Enter the Boob Bucket List. Before she can confidently make the choice for preventative surgery, Lacey gives herself six months to enjoy her breasts to the fullest. While the contents of the bucket list are not the most imaginative, the list represents something greater than itself: a woman’s right to choose what’s best for her body. A focus on female sexuality and self-empowerment is not new for Clark (The Regulars, 2016, etc.), but this time it comes with a welcome dose of real-life gravitas. It’s easy to overlook the fact that Lacey only checks off some of her must-dos thanks to a few inelegantly inserted plot devices because, in the end, it’s really not about the list. Instead, we're left with the power of female support systems, the importance of self-care, and the sobering realness of Lacey’s prognosis. The fashion scene and a cute, well-mannered hipster supporting character are added bonuses.
A compelling, thoughtful take on a very real women’s health issue; both confidently sexy and lighthearted at the same time.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7302-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Emily Bestler/Atria
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.
The time is the not-so-distant future, when the US's spiraling social freedoms have finally called down a reaction, an Iranian-style repressive "monotheocracy" calling itself the Republic of Gilead—a Bible-thumping, racist, capital-punishing, and misogynistic rule that would do away with pleasure altogether were it not for one thing: that the Gileadan women, pure and true (as opposed to all the nonbelieving women, those who've ever been adulterous or married more than once), are found rarely fertile.
Thus are drafted a whole class of "handmaids," whose function is to bear the children of the elite, to be fecund or else (else being certain death, sent out to be toxic-waste removers on outlying islands). The narrative frame for Atwood's dystopian vision is the hopeless private testimony of one of these surrogate mothers, Offred ("of" plus the name of her male protector). Lying cradled by the body of the barren wife, being meanwhile serviced by the husband, Offred's "ceremony" must be successful—if she does not want to join the ranks of the other disappeared (which include her mother, her husband—dead—and small daughter, all taken away during the years of revolt). One Of her only human conduits is a gradually developing affair with her master's chauffeur—something that's balanced more than offset, though, by the master's hypocritically un-Puritan use of her as a kind of B-girl at private parties held by the ruling men in a spirit of nostalgia and lust. This latter relationship, edging into real need (the master's), is very effectively done; it highlights the handmaid's (read Everywoman's) eternal exploitation, profane or sacred ("We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices"). Atwood, to her credit, creates a chillingly specific, imaginable night-mare. The book is short on characterization—this is Atwood, never a warm writer, at her steeliest—and long on cynicism—it's got none of the human credibility of a work such as Walker Percy's Love In The Ruins. But the scariness is visceral, a world that's like a dangerous and even fatal grid, an electrified fence.
Tinny perhaps, but still a minutely rendered and impressively steady feminist vision of apocalypse.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 1985
ISBN: 038549081X
Page Count: -
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1985
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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