DEAR STRANGER, DEAREST FRIEND

Newcomer Becker may have hoped to bring out the hankies, but this info-novel about breast cancer and close friendship—from the “scare and cheer” template that produces many a women’s magazine article—is too formulaic to trigger the tears.

When Lara, almost 40, finds a lump in her breast, she checks out the Internet before making an appointment with her doctor. Her most helpful and sympathetic reply is from Susan, a Catholic who lives in Canton, Ohio, who advises her (successfully) to see her doctor immediately. Though Lara is Jewish and lives in a New York suburb, the two, as the months pass, become close friends. Susan urges Lara to consult a second doctor when her first mammogram is negative; Lara does, and the lump is indeed malignant. The medical details, choice of treatment, and prognosis are all clearly spelled out, and there’s even an afterword by an oncologist as well as a list of Breast Cancer Resources. On the doctor’s advice, Lara has a double mastectomy followed by chemotherapy and then, when she’s healed, breast reconstruction. She shares the experience of all this with Susan, and the two also exchange information about their husbands, children, careers, and daily lives. Susan cheers, consoles, and applauds as Lara begins to recover and resume a normal life. But then Susan’s own life starts to fall apart: now it’s Lara’s turn to help the woman she calls her dearest friend.

A cutely packaged idea, and informative—it’s almost as much handbook as novel—but the two principals are tied to a script that, for all its good intentions and somber subject, never really lets things come alive.