Undying by Anne Boyer *****

Undying by Anne Boyer is a poetic and literary exploration of breast cancer. It explores the experience from historical and personal points of view with imagery and feelings. It is powerful and poetic. In the middle, the book turns dark when it considers doctors, treatments, and hospitals, especially in the United States. “The pharmaceutical companies lie. The doctors lie. The sick lie. The healthy lie. The researchers lie. The Internet lies.” And that’s the good news.

The author characterizes the politics of U.S. breast cancer health care with: “While [mastectomy patients] don’t get a hospital bed to recover in or rehabilitation for the cognitive damage incurred during their treatment, what they do get in the United States is federally mandated access to breast reconstruction—any type of implant they want.” The standard of care is “drive-by mastectomies.”

In the chapter titled, The Hoax, the author skewers the Internet, over-diagnosis, and frauds. All of this might be familiar to many readers, but she also attacks chemotherapy. “Maybe [future] medical historians will view chemotherapy with the same perplexed curiosity that ours do formerly common medical practices such as bloodletting—that not only did we severely poison people in attempts to make them well, but that even in those instances when chemotherapy doesn’t and won’t work and results in death, damage, and disability, there remains a popular desire for breast cancer patients to undergo it.”

“Too many women I know say they wish they had chosen, instead of treatment by drugs with mutilating and disabling effects, to die of their cancer.”

Beautifully written.

2020 Pulitzer Prize. The art and science of breast cancer. Read it!

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Some Assembly Required by Neil Shubin *****

SomeAssembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA by Neil Shubin surveys the history and current research about evolution. The science of evolution has progressed from pattern matching (these lifeforms look like their related) to DNA (these lifeforms have similar DNA). The most recent breakthroughs have been in the methods of evolution from [lots of random changes over a long time] to specific mechanisms which are described in this book. Readable and fascinating.

 The book is a collection of short biographies, each revealing another discovery in the quest to understand life on earth and how it evolved. A few of the scientists are household names like Darwin, and Watson and Crick, but most are lesser-known scientists who also made important contributions. For example, Lynn Margulis discovered that mitochondria and chloroplasts originated as free-living bacteria and algae. This is one of the mechanisms of evolution: incorporate another organism into your genome.

 One of the important lessons about evolution is that “nothing ever begins when you think it does.” Darwin suggested that evolution was not only a series of gradual changes, but major changes were “accompanied by a change of function.” For example, fish have swim bladders that take in air to moderate buoyancy. These swim bladders later became lungs. Dinosaurs had feathers and hollow bones. These later were used in flight.

 Before DNA analysis scientists knew that some capabilities evolved in parallel. For example, pterodactyls, bats, bees, and birds all independently evolved the ability for powered flight. With DNA analysis scientists can see similar multiple evolutionary pathways. Animals who previously were thought to be related by anatomical analysis have now been shown to be examples of parallel evolution.

 The revolutionary evolutionary steps are more likely combinations of organisms (horizontal genetic transfer) and repurposing of existing structures.  With the assistance of DNA analysis, most evolutionary mysteries have been explained, and the ideas of sudden changes and missing links have been abandoned.

 One interesting observation: several discoveries involving the interactions of human evolution and viruses builds on extensive research on HIV. While HIV research was motivated by the AIDS epidemic, it has delivered many benefits in other fields of research.

The latest research into the mechanisms of evolution and the scientists who discovered them.

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Close Up by Amanda Quick ****

Like the other books in this series, Close Up by Amanda Quick is set in Burning Cove on the central coast of California during the 1930s. The protagonist of this novel is Vivian Brazier, a struggling photographer. She aspires to be a fine art photographer but pays the rent with news photography—crime scenes, fires, and car accidents. This paying job leads her to help solve the mystery of the Dagger Killer, but then she becomes the target of a paid assassin.

The book includes the continuing characters and locations of Burning Cove, including, Luther Pell, owner of the Paradise night club with connections to government espionage and the mob, and Oliver Ward who owns the exclusive Burning Cove Hotel married to Irene Ward, star crime reporter at the Burning Cove Herald.

Vivian is protected from the assassin by Nick Sundridge, a person afflicted with the family curse of visions of the future. The topic of debilitating family curses is one theme of this book. The other is the evolution of art photography with realism versus impressionistic, and the tension between art nudes and pornography.

On a personal note, Vivian observes: “The big camera was the badge of the news photographer. Cops rarely questioned a freelancer who carried one.” The camera in the book was the Graflex Speed Graphic, the standard from World War I to the 1960s. This was a large camera that took sheet film. The film carrier had to be exchanged for each picture, so in addition to this bulky camera, the photographer also carried a supply of loaded film carriers (4” x 5” x 0.5” each). I can attest that the observation was true because along with a friend of mine we carried that camera into places we’d never been allowed otherwise.

A pleasant mystery of glamour and romance in the 1930s.

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GI Brides by Duncan Barrett ****

GI Brides: The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love by British authors Duncan Barrett and Nuala Calvi follows the lives of four women from meeting American soldiers during World War II through the current day. This is not a ‘they lived happily ever after’ fantasy. The four women faced challenges with husbands who changed. Upon return to America, the men turned out to be gamblers, alcoholics, and cheaters. Some families rejected the brides. Many marriages did not last. The women joined organizations of other GI brides. One had the motto: “We got through the war. We’re British, we can stand anything.”

The book includes many historical details and differences between British and American life. The major difference between American and British life was that the war was in England. The British experienced bombings and severe rationing, while the Americans observed the war from a safe distance. After the war, the American economy, which had not been bombed, recovered much more quickly than Europe.

The biggest surprise for the GI brides was the stark contrast between the Americans during the war where they were confident, important, and rich. They had money and supplies. They were able to shower the English women with luxuries, like stockings and meat. Upon returning to the U.S. they reverted to be postmen, coal miners, and unemployed. The transition was difficult for both men and women. The women, in their late teens and early twenties, had to learn to take care of and stand up for themselves and their children.

There were lots of interesting details. Women who couldn’t afford stockings, drew a line down the backs of their legs to simulate stocking seams. Enlisted women were issued “several enormous pairs of bloomers, which were unofficially known as ‘passion killers.’” Coat-hanger abortions were common. Women made wedding dresses from parachute silk “often salvaged from German pilots who had been shot down.” The brides were introduced to the American custom of baby showers. Wedding cakes in England tended to be hard fruitcakes, while the American version was soft sponge.

Health care was mixed. One mother contracted puerperal fever, child-bed fever, and her life was saved by penicillin. Another woman contracted polio.

For soldiers to get married, they needed permission from the army. If the soldiers did not want to get married, “the army hierarchy was adept at blocking women from tracking down errant fathers.”

A historical perspective of WWII England and post-war America. A tough look at the lives of GI brides.

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Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen *****

Here’s a funny story: Northanger Abbey started out as Jane Austen’s first novel, a satiric parody of gothic novels, but ended up being published posthumously and can be mistaken as a sendup of her own works. Austen opens the book warning the reader to expect something different, “No one who has ever seen Catherine Moreland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be a heroine.” Throughout the story, the author parodies the tropes of Austen’s earlier (later) novels.

The story covers familiar ground where young Catherine goes to Bath in the company of a family friend and meets by favorable and unfavorable men. The plot revolves around the financial considerations of marriage, miscommunications, and the tension between love and fortune. In the end, a good match is achieved.

The author makes fun of the standard tropes.

“There she fell miserably short of the true heroic height. At present, she did not know her own poverty, for she had no lover to portray. She had reached the age of seventeen, without having seen one amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility, without having inspired one real passion, and without having excited even any admiration but what was very moderate and very transient. This was strange indeed! But strange things may be generally accounted for if their cause be fairly searched out. There was not one lord in the neighborhood: no—not even a baronet. There was not one family among their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door—not one young man whose origin was unknown. Her father had no ward, and the squire of the parish no children.”

As Catherine set off the Bath, “It is remarkable, however, that she neither insisted on Catherine’s writing by every post, nor exacted her promise of transmitting the character of every new acquaintance, nor a detail of every interesting conversation that Bath might produce.” Later a gentleman chides Catherine, “Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenor of your life in Bath without one?”

The plot pokes fun at Gothic novels when Catherine gets in trouble when visiting “Northanger Abbey! These were thrilling words and wound up Catherine’s feelings to the highest point of ecstasy.” Catherine, an avid reader of Gothic novels, imagines the father has murdered his wife, and, when that is disproved, goes searching for her to be still alive a locked away. (foreshadowing Jane Eyre?).

A humorous romp for Jane Austen readers. Do not start her.

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