A ray of sunshine for those with similar struggles.
The odds for a positive outcome from pregnancy while battling cancer might seem improbably long, but Hosford’s hopeful debut memoir proves that, with a little bit of luck and lots of grit, it is entirely possible.
At just 37, fit, and a nonsmoker, Hosford seemed like one of the unlikeliest candidates for a devastating disease. Nevertheless, there it was—a suspicious lump in her breast that proved to be one of the most virulent types of breast cancers: triple negative. Barely settled into the surreal aftermath of the dreaded diagnosis, she was dealt another piece of news: she was pregnant, even after being told she was suffering from secondary infertility after the birth of her son, Ethan. In fact, it was precisely why the Hosfords had decided to adopt a baby girl from China, due to arrive in a few months. Handling even one of these life-altering events would be difficult enough for anybody, but Hosford went through it all with grace and a lot of help from her mom, sister Jenn, and especially her patient and steely husband, Grant. Hosford precisely captures the roller coaster of emotions she experiences, all “mixed, blended or pureed.” Understandably, she was envious of others’ seemingly normal lives and desperate to voice her fears and have her concerns validated. The family’s relief that the cancer was “only” stage 1 was an indication of just how much their standards had been recalibrated. Fortunately, as the memoir’s subtitle suggests, the harrowing account has a happy ending. At one point, Hosford recalls: “I need something to aspire to, stories that give me hope and maybe even a smile while I trudge through my ‘journey.’ ” And that’s exactly what this moving memoir delivers. “Being brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. Being brave is being scared out of your mind, and doing what you need to do anyway,” Grant once reminded her. By that measure, Hosford might have been bald, fat, and crazy—but also incredibly courageous.
A ray of sunshine for those with similar struggles.Pub Date: May 28, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Nothing But The Truth Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A...
Valediction from the late neurologist and writer Sacks (On the Move: A Life, 2015, etc.).
In this set of four short essays, much-forwarded opinion pieces from the New York Times, the author ponders illness, specifically the metastatic cancer that spread from eye to liver and in doing so foreclosed any possibility of treatment. His brief reflections on that unfortunate development give way to, yes, gratitude as he examines the good things that he has experienced over what, in the end, turned out to be a rather long life after all, lasting 82 years. To be sure, Sacks has regrets about leaving the world, not least of them not being around to see “a thousand…breakthroughs in the physical and biological sciences,” as well as the night sky sprinkled with stars and the yellow legal pads on which he worked sprinkled with words. Sacks works a few familiar tropes and elaborates others. Charmingly, he reflects on his habit since childhood of associating each year of his life with the element of corresponding atomic weight on the periodic table; given polonium’s “intense, murderous radioactivity,” then perhaps 84 isn’t all that it’s cut out to be. There are some glaring repetitions here, unfortunate given the intense brevity of this book, such as his twice citing Nathaniel Hawthorne’s call to revel in “intercourse with the world”—no, not that kind. Yet his thoughts overall—while not as soul-stirringly inspirational as the similar reflections of Randy Pausch or as bent on chasing down the story as Christopher Hitchens’ last book—are shaped into an austere beauty, as when Sacks writes of being able in his final moments to “see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts.”
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A fitting, lovely farewell.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-451-49293-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading...
A maddening, well-constructed tale of medical discovery and corporate coverup, set in morgues, laboratories, courtrooms, and football fields.
Nigeria-born Bennet Omalu is perhaps an unlikely hero, a medical doctor board-certified in four areas of pathology, “anatomic, clinical, forensic, and neuropathology,” and a well-rounded specialist in death. When his boss, celebrity examiner Cyril Wecht (“in the autopsy business, Wecht was a rock star”), got into trouble for various specimens of publicity-hound overreach, Omalu was there to offer patient, stoical support. The student did not surpass the teacher in flashiness, but Omalu was a rock star all his own in studying the brain to determine a cause of death. Laskas’ (Creative Writing/Univ. of Pittsburgh; Hidden America, 2012, etc.) main topic is the horrific injuries wrought to the brains and bodies of football players on the field. Omalu’s study of the unfortunate brain of Pittsburgh Steeler Mike Webster, who died in 2002 at 50 of a supposed heart attack, brought new attention to the trauma of concussion. Laskas trades in sportwriter-ese, all staccato delivery full of tough guy–isms and sports clichés: “He had played for fifteen seasons, a warrior’s warrior; he played in more games—two hundred twenty—than any other player in Steelers history. Undersized, tough, a big, burly white guy—a Pittsburgh kind of guy—the heart of the best team in history.” A little of that goes a long way, but Laskas, a Pittsburgher who first wrote of Omalu and his studies in a story in GQ, does sturdy work in keeping up with a grim story that the NFL most definitely did not want to see aired—not in Omalu’s professional publications in medical journals, nor, reportedly, on the big screen in the Will Smith vehicle based on this book.
Effectively sobering. Suffice it to say that Pop Warner parents will want to armor their kids from head to toe upon reading it.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8757-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
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