Reviews

Dandelions to Razorblades by Emily Cooper, Louise Bohmer and John Irvine 34 Pages, Paperback Sideshow Press, 2007
Reviewed by Sharon White   The horrific images of Dandelions to Razorblades might make for a few sleepless nights, but it is well worth a bit of insomnia to gain such vivid, artfully detailed insights into the fragile human existence. The book includes the work of three poets: Emily Cooper, Louise Bohmer, and John Irvine, and is illustrated in masterful nightmarish scenes by Meghan Hakes, Dick Starr, and Jonathan Streb.   Emily’s poetry tells of damaged familial relationships and confusion. Suicidal tendencies, eating disorders, and regret plague the characters that experience a full spectrum of feelings brought on by Life, the cruel dictator. Emily’s poetry is more than visual; it is full of details making you feel every word. Confusion, innocence lost, being different from everyone else, and trying desperately to fit in and be accepted makes for a lonely world, indeed. This young woman lets us know that real horrors lie in wait around nearly every corner but that the human spirit can endure and overcome the nasty things Life throws at us.   Louise slides into the lonely trenches of a relentless and dark cavern of the human psyche where terrors and secrets hide in subhuman forms to step out at unexpected times causing grief and pain. No matter how well we hide our demons they all come out of hiding every now and again. Our only chance is to stand up and fight for control hoping against hope that we win. Louise paints a vivid and dark landscape, capturing the feel of confusion, fear, yearning, and loneliness with unyielding talent.   John, with his awesome grasp and use of the language, shows a world full of hopes and dreams that are just out of reach. A relentless ego pushes one person forward constantly, uphill and struggling to soothe itself. Another (or mayhap the same) character feels no intimate relationship with his own personal possessions in a lonely tale of detachment. Then there are the ones suffering from nervous tics, lying to themselves and others, trying hard to believe they are all right. A tale of how easy it is to become someone else while online, whether as a form of escape or a deadly ruse, is terrifying. Being torn to shreds by a ruthless mob that wants you to be something you’re not is not a pleasant thought, either.   The underlying theme throughout “Dandelions to Razorblades” is feeling like the odd man out. The characters deal with the broken or badly damaged aspects of their lives, with loneliness, and with how all these things affect their perceptions. The three poets and three illustrators have captured the dark side of human life and let it bleed onto the pages for us to wonder about at our leisure. In Dandelions to Razorblades the fight for survival, ranging from physical to mental, real to imagined, is always compelling.
How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman, M.D. 291 pages, Hardcover Houghton Mifflin Company. 2007 ISBN:978-0-618-61003-7   Better by Atul Gawande 273 pages, Hardcover Henry Holt and Company. 2007 ISBN: 978-0-8050-8211-1
Reviewed by Carole Ann Moleti   Jerome Groopman and Atul Gawande both work in Boston, at some of the oldest, most prestigious institutions of the Massachusetts medical establishment. Groopman holds the Dina and Raphael Recanati Chair of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and is chief of experimental medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. His specialty is oncology. Gawande is a general surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He is also an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. They are both staff writers for The New Yorker and frequently contribute op-ed pieces to The New York Times.   How Doctors Think stands firmly in the genre of narrative nonfiction. Though there are personal experiences woven through, Groopman’s prose is pedantic, clinically oriented, and based heavily on research into perception.   The book includes diagrams to help the reader better understand physiology and Groopman provides clear explanations of complex medical concepts and case histories. He devotes individual chapters to the stories of several medical specialists. We meet an internist who describes her day as faces flashing by as if they were on a moving train, and a pediatrician who talks about finding the one child out of dozens on her schedule that might have more than a self-limiting virus. Particularly frightening is the radiologist who worries about the tendency to scroll a track ball too fast, skipping over a series of images on a MRI or CT scan that could have significant findings.   Groopman’s book was written to help the lay public understand doctors are human beings, trained to make decisions in an orderly, scientific way. That does not take into account that the practice of medicine has a large component of art and intuition, in addition to science. His aim is to empower patients to be partners in their care, to help their physicians take better care of them, and share in the sometimes heartbreaking, difficult decisions.   Groopman mentions only in passing the effect of malpractice suits on medical decision making. He stops far short of discussing the major impact it has upon those of us forced to order tests and perform procedures to protect more than the patient’s rear end. He delves into the effect of pharmaceutical marketing, politics and the lobbying practices on that industry, but never addresses the role of Food and Drug Administration and United States politics on pharmaceutical research and development. But if his goal is to empower people to be more proactive in their care, particularly in difficult, challenging situations, I have to say he met it.   Better straddles the divide between narrative and creative nonfiction. Gawande’s prose is conversational and descriptive, full of colloquialisms and personal anecdotes, and peppered with ironic humor.   In contrast to Groopman, who I visualized at a lectern, laser pointer at the ready, it felt like I was following Gawande on rounds, listening to him cracking jokes and using a creative turn of phrase. He is patient, but firm in his conviction that the focus should be on what is best for the patient. But then he shrugs his shoulders and lets the reader come to his or her own conclusion after he presents both sides of an issue. All his discussions are the epitome of journalistic balance but I expected more from him than suggestions.   Gawande analyzes the medical insurance and malpractice crises and hints at some solutions. While both books examine the doctor-patient relationship and the complexities of clinical decision making, Gawande takes a broader view, showing off his public health perspective. He delves into controversial topics like the participation of doctors and nurses at executions.   The inability to solve the problem of hospital acquired infections in one of the most advanced medical systems in the world sits beside the challenges faced by Indian health workers covering huge distances, battling poverty and superstition, to stop a polio outbreak. The reader sees how difficult fighting treatable and preventable disease can be in developing countries. And it’s another example of how American hospitals, with all their resources, have made little progress in assuring patient safety.   Gawande devotes an entire chapter to the newest battlefield medical techniques that keep wounded soldiers alive in Iraq and Afghanistan. This book came out before the debacle over substandard care and inadequate conditions the soldiers were subjected to once they came back to the United States. In his defense, Gawande did publish a stinging op-ed piece in The New York Times analyzing how the United States government allowed that to happen.   Both men come to the conclusion that change is desperately needed but acknowledge that right now, this is the system, and we have to make the best of it. In short, they deliver a gentle slap on the wrist instead of a lion's roar. That surprised me since I have seen much more impassioned words in their op-ed columns in The New York Times.   Groopman and Gawande could have used the power of the pen, and their ability to reach a wide audience, to stir the American public to take action. And both have the paternalistic tone of physicians with only a look down the nose nod to the legions of other health care workers working beside them.
Rat atouille for the Rindless Poetry by John Irvine Illustrations by Dave Freeman 32 Pages, Paperback Preshrunk Press, 2007 ISBN: 978-0-473-12544-8
Reviewed by James Swingle   From the opening image of God relaxing in his La-Z Boy with a vodka martini after creating the world, through Brian the rat's adventures in corporate, intellectual, New Age, literary, vegan and other realms, Rat atouille for the Rindless is a tour de force of iconoclasm.  If any of the targets John Irvine and Dave Freeman puncture offend, just turn the page—you're sure to find them making fun of something you find every bit as silly as they do.    John's pet rat Brian leads an active life, always willing to jump on a bandwagon, join a movement, initiate an intellectual exploration.  He's chanted om, tried to bring God to the suburbs, traversed New Zealand as an amateur ornithologist and watched twenty-five years of Star Trek on video tape. [Brian] reads Joyce and Burns and Solzhenitsyn and Browning and claims to understand.   He is given to flamboyant paw gestures He won't ...let synthetics touch his person or use utensils constructed from endangered rain forests. When Brian turns his attention to writing poetry, there's a brilliant description of the deleterious effect of only having three fingers on one's ability to master haiku.   Dave Freeman's illustrations perfectly capture the mood, as Brian journeys from corporate burnout to rifle-toting Marine to Gauloise-smoking effete to Marxist being pelted with rotten eggs at a rally.  And wait until you see the bare-breasted rats of the South Pacific, which Brian meets during his Gaugin phase.   The book's introduction suggests the reader looking for illumination get a "box of matches" and "a can of petrol," but the book is more penetrating than the authors let on.  The poems reminded me of E.A. Robinson's "Miniver Cheever."  They come out of that tradition of social satire aimed at the pretensions of self-nominated elites.  John has a great ear for the cliches of upper-crust urban society, and Dave a great eye for the perfect accompanying image.  They make fun of the received wisdoms of modern life with gusto, but without ever losing their good nature.  So when John Irvine and Dave Freeman's targets hit close to home (yes, I do enjoy a "well-turned, / well brie-d brioche") I thought it was all the funnier.
Dying to Live by Kim Paffenroth 216 Pages, Paperback Permuted Press, 2007 ISBN: 978-0978970734
Reviewed by Karen L. Newman   I wasn’t surprised to see a zombie novel from Kim Paffenroth. After all, he won a Stoker Award in nonfiction for his book Gospel of the Living Dead that delves into the correlation of humanity to the zombies of the George Romero films from Christian and Dante perspectives. What was a surprise was how well Paffenroth made the transition to writing fiction.   Dying to Live explores the life of one man, Jonah Caine, a college English professor, after the zombie apocalypse. The novel opens with Jonah on the run. He lives and fights alone until he’s rescued by a group of survivors based at a museum. While there he befriends a military man, Jack and a scientist, Milton. Jonah trains to fight zombies with girlfriend Tanya and Popcorn, a scrappy orphan, as part of a citizenship requirement for his new community. These lessons serve him well when he is forced to fight an even greater evil – the living. What Jonah and his new friends find is that the horrors they endured for the past several months is nothing compared to those they find among the new group of survivors.     Dying to Live is fast-paced and plot-driven. It can easily be read in one sitting. The language Paffenroth uses is simple, like that of Stephen King. This style accentuates the violence of the fight scenes very effectively. The imagery is detailed, very bloody, and gory. Nothing is left to the reader’s imagination. There are pros and cons to this approach, but it works here. The ongoing apocalypse is shown at its most nightmarish worst. This book is not for the squeamish.   Since the novel is only one hundred and ninety pages, there isn’t extensive character development. The characters' backgrounds are introduced as they tell others how they came to be at the museum. There are no flashbacks to stop the present action, enabling the reader to stay engrossed in the story.  Paffenroth is an intelligent writer and he makes the reader care for his characters. When some of them die or are hurt, the horror is compounded.   However, it’s Jonah’s own struggle with the horrors around him that turns Dying to Live from an ordinary zombie novel to a treatise on human nature. From discussing the parts of a soul with Milton to his inward railing at God, Jonah personifies the human quest for the answers of our existence and the understanding of the human depravity involved, particularly in light of a tragedy. Paffenroth puts the reader in Jonah’s head as an active participant in this study. The reader feels what Jonah feels, his pain, anguish, and even the guilt of surviving. This connection embellishes the horrors even further, making the book even scarier.   Aspects of Christianity and Dante abound in this novel, just as they did in the author’s nonfiction book. Even though a good understanding of Christianity is crucial for the delineation of the many Jesus references, either inferred or implied, one can still grasp Jonah’s conclusions and his emotional consternations. However, unfamiliarity with Dante’s Inferno, which is referenced directly in several scenes, negatively affected the overall horror the author is trying to convey in those passages.   In conclusion I enjoyed Kim Paffenroth’s first fiction novel Dying to Live. It is an outstanding addition to the zombie lore. He is a writer to watch. I recommend this book and look forward to his next work.

 

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