What We Have: Review and Giveaway

Cancer is a disease we all dread. Although there have been numerous advances in treatments and cures over the past few decades, we still have a considerable way to go and need to improve our ability to prevent, treat, and cure cancer in the future. What We Have: One Family's Inspiring Story About Love, Loss, and Survival by Amy Boesky is a memoir, published in 2010, in which cancer plays a central role. Cancer is never far from Amy's thoughts, because for generations the women in her family died young from ovarian cancer, before the age of forty-five. As a result, Amy's biological clock (an overused term, but it truly fits here) ticks all the more rapidly and forcefully under the dreary shadow of cancer.

Often I beat around the bush a bit before I deliver my "verdict" about any particular book. In this case, though, I'll announce right away that I was immediately and thoroughly engaged by this book. It is very well written, and I finished it rather quickly, in just a few days. I found the author's story, told with candor and grace (and a welcome dose of humor), very absorbing. I enjoyed reading about her romance and marriage to Jacques, an easy-going optimist by nature. Cancer has a profound influence over the lives of Amy and her sisters, Julie and Sara, and their mother, Elaine. In this sensitive, highly-detailed memoir, which is heartbreaking at times, relationships are at the very core of the story, close and often complex relationships, and I felt privileged to read this personal account of her life. (I have three sisters, and this book made me think about my own relationships with them, and with my mother, and about our connections as family members.) As a writer, Amy Boesky is not afraid to expose her anxieties, not just about cancer but about other things, too, such as being a mother, especially in those miraculous yet daunting early days with an infant. Ultimately, I felt inspired by Amy's story, because she presents the glass as half-full, and her courage on a daily basis is remarkable. Instead of lamenting her possible fate, she lives life to the fullest, in spite of her fears, and appreciates the glorious details of everyday life.

"That’s how it is for me, thinking about the future. Two different shapes. One holding time, the other escaping it. One suggesting fragility, confinement; the other, something transcendent. Turn it one way, you see an hourglass. Turn it the other way, and you see wings."
~What We Have, Amy Boesky

I think many others would be equally interested in and inspired by Amy's story. Penguin Group is generously giving away a copy of What We Have (U.S./Canada only).

• To enter the giveaway for this book, simply leave a comment.
• For another chance at winning, become a follower of this blog, or let me know that you're already a follower, or that you subscribe in Google Reader.
  
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Enter by 5 PM PDT on Monday, August 30. One winner will be selected randomly and announced on Tuesday, August 31. In October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, TLC will host a Book Club of the Month contest for this book, and one book club will win up to ten copies of this book, so if you're in a book club be sure to stop by TLC in October.

Special thanks to Lisa from TLC for including me on this tour. For more reviews of this book, please visit the other stops on TLC's blog tour for What We Have.