Washington Post Book Reviews
For You
Saturday October 9, 2010
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PROMISE ME: How a Sister's Love Launched the Global Movement to End Breast Cancer
PROMISE ME: How a Sister's Love Launched the Global Movement to End Breast CancerNancy G
Brinker with Joni Rogers
ISBN 978-0-307-71812-9
356 pages
$25.99
WHAT WE HAVE: One Family's Inspiring Story About Love, Loss, and SurvivalAmy Boesky
Gotham
ISBN 978-1-592-40551-0
327 pages
$26
Reviewed by Nora Krug
For those who have been touched by cancer in some way -- is there anyone who hasn't? -- reading one of the many cancer memoirs burdening bookstore shelves is always a risk. Will the book dredge up memories we'd care to forget? Or will it offer empathy, hope and maybe even a little gallows humor? Two new additions to the genre offer all the above.
Nancy Brinker is a cancer survivor, but it is her sister, Susan G. Komen, who in death has become a symbol of the disease. In "Promise Me," Brinker tells the story, as her publisher puts it, of the love that launched a movement -- of how Brinker came to found the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the organization behind the Race for the Cure, which has transformed how we think about a pink ribbon -- and perhaps how we think about breast cancer itself. Brinker is more than a little proud of her own moxie ("I'm not everyone's cup of tea" is a running joke between her and her ex-husband), and the book is as much an ode to her own chutzpah and accomplishments as it is a compelling tale of living with cancer.
Brinker was once married to Norman E. Brinker, the mastermind behind the Steak & Ale restaurant chain, and the two were a formidable pair in the Dallas polo and charity scene. (A friend of the Bushes, she went on to become ambassador to Hungary and White House chief of protocol and was recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.) On more than one occasion, we see Brinker tramping across a field or thundering through an event, her hair "swelling like a sea urchin," her mud-spattered shoes sinking into the grass.
The picture Brinker paints of her early life is a far more humble one, of an idyllic America in Peoria, Ill., where her parents instilled in their children a strong -- one might call it strong-armed -- sense of civic duty. In one telling anecdote, Brinker's mother pulls her car to the side of the road to admonish her children for not taking the scourge of polio seriously enough. "When you see someone in need, you give. When you see something wrong, you (BEG ITAL)fix(END ITAL) it," Brinker recalls her mother as saying. The next day, the girls held a variety show and donated the proceeds to a local hospital.
Even more foreboding was the threat of cancer. Throughout their 20s, Brinker and Komen had multiple scares with breast lumps, "an inconvenience we both learned to live with," Brinker explains. Komen, however, "was happily lulled into a complacent sense of confidence" that made her later diagnosis with an advanced case of breast cancer all the more troubling. (Brinker herself was later diagnosed with an early stage of the disease.)
Towering over the narrative, however, is Brinker's outsize personality. At Komen's funeral, for example, Brinker writes of her outrage, not just at her sister's suffering and death, but at the undertaker, whose makeup job she deemed inferior. Brinker ordered him to remove it, pulled out her own cosmetic case, "leaned down over the edge of the coffin" and redid it herself. "Suzy left us with the daytime look," she explains.
Needless to say, Brinker, who co-wrote the book with Joni Rodgers, has a flair for the dramatic. It's a quality that makes "Promise Me" an engaging read, though some of its more theatrical moments strain credulity. A disclaimer at the front of the book warns: "I don't pretend to remember every exchange verbatim." So did her dying sister, lying in the back seat of a car, plead, haltingly, "We have to do something ... to help ... those women at the hospital. Make it better ... for them ... for their families. ... Promise me it'll be better"? It hardly matters -- it's a perfect line to inspire a movement (and sell a book), and Brinker plays it to the hilt. The Susan G. Komen Foundation has contributed roughly $1.5 billion for research and cancer programs to date. For those of us who have watched loved ones endure the disease, Brinker's chutzpah on our behalf is much appreciated.
Like Brinker, Amy Boesky has long lived with the specter of cancer. As a child, she writes in her memoir "What We Have," she was haunted by the many women in her family who died young from ovarian cancer. "We had black-and-white photographs of all the dead aunts and grandmothers and great-aunts hanging in the hallway of our second floor," she writes. "Worrying was part of who I was." Is it any wonder, given her family's choice of decor?
Boesky, an associate professor of English at Boston College, calls herself a "previvor," a term for people who don't have cancer but, because of family history, are predisposed to get it. Modern science -- with tests for genes like BRAC1 and BRAC2 -- has put people like her in a quandary: "Who wants to know her genetic destiny and have to live with the consequences?" she asks. Her response: not me. Instead, Boesky assumes the worst and plans accordingly: Have kids as early as possible, and then have her breasts and ovaries removed. "I didn't expect guarantees," she explains, "But I had a responsibility ... to take care of what I could."
It would seem, then, that Boesky could offer a thoughtful, personal examination of the thorny decisions faced by previvors, as Masha Gessen did in her 2008 book, "Blood Matters." Boesky mentions, for example, that her sister avoided genetic testing out of fear that her HMO wouldn't cover surgery if she had tested positive. Unfortunately, Boesky gives little more than passing mention to such matters, instead weighing down the narrative with digressions on her marriage and struggles with baby-rearing. There's just too much here about the mundane details of her life despite the rich material of her story.
In fact, the emotional center of the book is Boesky's mother, Elaine, who managed to dodge ovarian cancer but developed breast cancer that later spread to her bones and beyond. Elaine is an optimist and doer who upon hearing her diagnosis expressed concern about her doctor's sadness. Always full of plans and telling others not to worry, she kept an oncology textbook by her bedside along with a copy of a Hemlock Society paperback. She is an endearing, well-drawn character, which makes her decline especially difficult to witness.
In the end, neither modern science nor pre-emptive surgery could mitigate the helplessness Boesky felt as her mother slipped away: "Just my mother and I: the two of us," she writes of one of their last meetings. "Early evening light coming through the shutters. Her wig had tipped to one side while she slept, and if I had been another kind of person, I would've scooped her up in my arms and sobbed. Instead, I stood uneasily by the doorway, still feeling sick to my stomach, my eyes swimming, wishing there was something I could do to make any of this better."
The rewards of reading a cancer memoir are indeed uneasy. But in moments like that, they are worth the price.
Nora Krug writes the New in Paperback column for The Washington Post Book World. Se can be reached at krugn(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
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ON SECOND THOUGHT: Outsmarting Your Mind's Hard-Wired Habits
Wray Herbert
Crown
ISBN 978-0-307-46163-6
289 pages
$25
Reviewed by Mark Berman
In his engaging new book, Wray Herbert delves into a subject that has topped the best-seller lists of late: the unconscious actions and reactions that affect our daily lives (think "Blink"). But ignore the subtitle's promise of self-help tips, because Herbert doesn't spend much time telling you how to circumvent your gut reactions. Instead, he's more interested in explaining how our minds process information and the implications of our cognitive quirks.
The book starts slowly, with a discussion of unconscious physical reactions, before moving into the more interesting territory of how we comprehend numbers, the world and existence itself. "Our brains employ all sorts of tricks and shortcuts to get us through the day," Herbert writes. They can be simple, like imitating others in order to feel accepted and connected, and the littlest things can have a big impact. The font on exercise instructions, for example, can influence whether we choose to work out. Wray also cites intriguing research that shows how "our deepest psychological needs may play a big part in determining where we fall on the political spectrum." In one study, psychologists found that conservatives "have little tolerance for any messiness," whereas liberals were more likely to live amid clutter.
Herbert, a former Newsweek columnist who writes the blog We're Only Human for the Association for Psychological Science, clearly shows the effects of various daily mental maneuvers and peppers the text with explanations of how the human mind has evolved. It's readable, meandering and eminently "Gladwellian."
Mark Berman can be reached at bermanm(at symbol)washpost.com.
Copyright 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
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