This review is a metaphor. I just place it here, with the full potential of a rant.
It could have been about the (not-so) ‘unfair’ life of these kids,This review is a metaphor. I just place it here, with the full potential of a rant.
It could have been about the (not-so) ‘unfair’ life of these kids, about this cancer story which asks for our emotional involvement (pity? empathy?) with these cancer victims — who can only be called extremely lucky by any measure among the majority of the cancer patients in the world… the people who does not even have the money to diagnose it, let alone fight it. I could replicate the “author’s rant”, and add the full force of third world woe to it.
But that would take away from the fact that despite its obvious shortcomings, the story has heart, and I enjoyed it. Green keeps it together and doesn’t allow it to cloy and melt too much. Keeps it bearable. And more than that, takes a story about cancer and makes it about the human condition - of the ability to have love and happiness in the face of the worst odds imaginable. Every love story is an epic story, every love story has to fight odds that cannot be imagined outside of it. And yet we keep doing it. Because there is nothing else that we are really supposed to be doing. Love is all. Cancer is immaterial in the face of such a power, heck death and wars and epidemics and dictators cannot stop it, one disease sure as hell is not going to. So we have this one force that trumps everything, has been the one constant of history. And we have this one story that keeps us going through it all - the star-crossed lovers. Green starts off promising us a story we have to like because we would be insensitive not to, but ends up giving as the story that each of us know is our own, with a different setting, with different struggles even if sometimes of slightly longer duration. But then they all encompass the same infinities. They all give us the same eternities. Green surrenders his story to that larger story in the end. And so should we.
So I place this review here, but I don’t light it.
As Samadrita says, “just because a book is being read and liked by millions, doesn't mean it has to be another Twilight or Fifty Shades of Grey. And I only appeal to readers to give Green the benefit of the doubt.”
This was definitely much more than just your average popular science book. Never have a I read a non-fiction book that is so multi-faceted - science, This was definitely much more than just your average popular science book. Never have a I read a non-fiction book that is so multi-faceted - science, superstition, ethics, family troubles, violence, estrangement, racism - what a cocktail! Full review soon....more
What a masterpiece. With beautiful metaphors, poignant case studies, breath-taking science and delectable literary allusions, SiddharthaAnna Cancerina
What a masterpiece. With beautiful metaphors, poignant case studies, breath-taking science and delectable literary allusions, Siddhartha Mukherjee takes us on a detailed yet panoramic trip spanning centuries. Probably one of the best science books I have ever read.
My favorite parts in the book are the literary allusions that capture the depth and feeling of what is being described so well, such as Cancer Ward, Alice in Wonderland, Invisible Cities, Oedipus Rex and many more.
The most memorable of all is when he encapsulates Cancer with a play on the favorite opening lines from Anna Karenina - "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." becomes "Normal cells are identically normal; malignant cells become unhappily malignant in unique ways." This unacknowledged transmutation of the famous lines encapsulates the book for me, in more ways than one.
For a comprehensive take on the influence of cancer as a metaphor in our daily lives and societies, go here....more
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