Teacher and entrepreneur Anna Johannessen was 37 when first diagnosed with breast cancer; after a spirited, valiant eight- year battle with the disease, she died, leaving two children (ages 11 and 13), her husband, and legions of devoted friends. Journalist MacPherson (formerly of the Washington Post and the New York Times; Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation, 1984, etc.) was moved to write this account after suffering losses in her own family. She spent two years following the Johannessen family during Anna’s illness and here chronicles their ordeal, beginning with the initial, shocking diagnosis (like more than 70 percent of women who develop breast cancer, Anna had no genetic or other high-risk factors) and ending with Anna’s eventual peaceful death at home. As recounted here, Anna tried bravely to keep control over her illness and treatment, finding an oncologist with whom she was comfortable, exploring all treatment options, including those that were experimental (her husband, a biomedical researcher, helped immeasurably in keeping her regimens at the forefront of breast cancer treatment). MacPherson pauses frequently throughout to explore issues common to families facing a similar medical crisis: difficulty finding the most effective treatment, insurance foul-ups, masculine/feminine grieving styles, children’s issues, how death actually approaches, and what support can be found from outside sources such as hospices—MacPherson draws on expert views as well as her own and the Johannessens— experiences. Her close involvement with the family, however, leads to a sometimes awkward presentation—neither an uninvolved observer nor an intimate, MacPherson is nonetheless far too involved to offer clear-eyed, straightforward advice. Families actively involved in a similar heartbreaking journey don’t need to read of another family’s pain—rather, they’ll benefit more from some more succinct, well-organized help for day-to-day survival than is presented here.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-82264-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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