Reflective, upbeat, and hopeful; offers honest insight into the real trials and tribulations of a cancer patient as well as...
A lung cancer survivor offers hope for patients, families, and friends.
Van de Water’s whole life changed in an instant when, at 47 as a healthy nonsmoker, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. In this debut memoir, she traces her illness with first-person candor and an eye for medical detail. She shares her thoughts and emotions openly; just as important, she demonstrates an uncanny strength to overcome fear. “The odds were not in my favor,” writes Van de Water, “and I decided not to pay any attention to that.” There is a real sense of being present at the author’s side as the chapters unfold. Van de Water chronicles meetings with doctors and describes what it’s like to have a CT scan, biopsy, and PET scan (with reprints of her medical results adding to the realism). She also discusses her operation, recovery, and subsequent chemotherapy. All along the way, the author is unafraid to reveal her most vulnerable self, yet she maintains enough composure to rationally tell her story and accurately document her experiences. One of the more poignant chapters, “Hair,” is itself an essay on attitudes toward hair loss caused by chemotherapy. “People don’t question if a man is ill or going through chemotherapy when he steps out with a shiny dome,” Van de Water observes. “Hair, for women, is different.” Later, she proclaims, “Have fun with it.…Here is your chance to never have a bad hair day.” It is this kind of refreshingly candid and humorous perspective in the face of adversity that contributes to the emotionally earnest book’s readability. Particularly helpful at the end of each short chapter are the “tips” the author provides for both the cancer patient and the patient’s “team.” Upon returning home after surgery, for example, Van de Water counsels patients, “Do not feel guilty.…Be unapologetically selfish for one year.” She advises the team, “Do not ring the doorbell unless you are expected.”
Reflective, upbeat, and hopeful; offers honest insight into the real trials and tribulations of a cancer patient as well as valuable advice for those facing treatment.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4834-5496-2
Page Count: 178
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.
Fremont (After Long Silence, 1999) continues—and alters—her story of how memories of the Holocaust affected her family.
At the age of 44, the author learned that her father had disowned her, declaring her “predeceased”—or dead in his eyes—in his will. It was his final insult: Her parents had stopped speaking to her after she’d published After Long Silence, which exposed them as Jewish Holocaust survivors who had posed as Catholics in Europe and America in order to hide multilayered secrets. Here, Fremont delves further into her tortured family dynamics and shows how the rift developed. One thread centers on her life after her harrowing childhood: her education at Wellesley and Boston University, the loss of her virginity to a college boyfriend before accepting her lesbianism, her stint with the Peace Corps in Lesotho, and her decades of work as a lawyer in Boston. Another strand involves her fraught relationship with her sister, Lara, and how their difficulties relate to their father, a doctor embittered after years in the Siberian gulag; and their mother, deeply enmeshed with her own sister, Zosia, who had married an Italian count and stayed in Rome to raise a child. Fremont tells these stories with novelistic flair, ending with a surprising theory about why her parents hid their Judaism. Yet she often appears insensitive to the serious problems she says Lara once faced, including suicidal depression. “The whole point of suicide, I thought, was to succeed at it,” she writes. “My sister’s completion rate was pathetic.” Key facts also differ from those in her earlier work. After Long Silence says, for example, that the author grew up “in a small city in the Midwest” while she writes here that she grew up in “upstate New York,” changes Fremont says she made for “consistency” in the new book but that muddy its narrative waters. The discrepancies may not bother readers seeking psychological insights rather than factual accuracy, but others will wonder if this book should have been labeled a fictionalized autobiography rather than a memoir.
A vivid sequel that strains credulity.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-982113-60-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A straightforward tale of kindness and paying it forward in 1980s New York.
When advertising executive Schroff answered a child’s request for spare change by inviting him for lunch, she did not expect the encounter to grow into a friendship that would endure into his adulthood. The author recounts how she and Maurice, a promising boy from a drug-addicted family, learned to trust each other. Schroff acknowledges risks—including the possibility of her actions being misconstrued and the tension of crossing socio-economic divides—but does not dwell on the complexities of homelessness or the philosophical problems of altruism. She does not question whether public recognition is beneficial, or whether it is sufficient for the recipient to realize the extent of what has been done. With the assistance of People human-interest writer Tresniowski (Tiger Virtues, 2005, etc.), Schroff adheres to a personal narrative that traces her troubled relationship with her father, her meetings with Maurice and his background, all while avoiding direct parallels, noting that their childhoods differed in severity even if they shared similar emotional voids. With feel-good dramatizations, the story seldom transcends the message that reaching out makes a difference. It is framed in simple terms, from attributing the first meeting to “two people with complicated pasts and fragile dreams” that were “somehow meant to be friends” to the conclusion that love is a driving force. Admirably, Schroff notes that she did not seek a role as a “substitute parent,” and she does not judge Maurice’s mother for her lifestyle. That both main figures experience a few setbacks yet eventually survive is never in question; the story fittingly concludes with an epilogue by Maurice. For readers seeking an uplifting reminder that small gestures matter.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4251-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Howard Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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