Release date: 2010 / 323 pages
Synopsis (from back cover): At 32, Amy Boesky thought she had it all figured out: a wonderful new man in her life, a great job, and the (nearly perfect) home. For once, she was almost able to shake the terrible fear that had gripped her for as long as she could remember…
First line: “On March 25, 1993, at the end of a long, unusually snowy winter, I got a letter from the chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health at Creighton University.”
Review: I read so many memoirs; however, after finishing Boesky’s I now want to hand a copy of What We Have to any aspiring memoirist and say, “This is your standard.” To the readers of this review, I want to say “Don’t worry about the premise, just read this. Really.”
What We Have reads like a page-turning, engrossing, suspenseful, heart-breaking novel. When the narrative begins, Amy is pregnant with her first child, happily married to a wonderful man, a graduate of both Harvard and Oxford Universities, working on her dissertation in Boston… and wracked with anxiety that her mortality is looming.
And, after reading the Prologue, this fear is completely understandable:
“This story is about what it’s been like for one family – mine – to live with risk … it’s a previvor’s story. A previvor is someone who doesn’t have cancer, but has a known (elevated) risk for it, discovered through family history or through diagnosis with a genetic mutation. …The bad news is, that means you don’t have anything to fix or get better from. You can diagnosis being a previvor, but you can’t treat it. [Previvor] just becomes part of who you are.”
In Amy’s case, ”who she is” means witty, compassionate, kind, honest, and fearful. Amy shares with us her pregnancy and the first few months of motherhood with a sense of humor and perspective that is a testament to her desire to not be defined by “previvor.” As a woman without children of my own, I loved the chance to experience Amy’s first few months of sleeplessness, wonder, and magic. The birth of Sascha does allow Amy a reprieve from her personal worries, but eventually the genetic fears loom once again.
Eventually, Amy and her two sisters must make decisions that no woman wants to consider – pre-emptive hysterectomies, BRCA testing, and peeks into the genetic future of their daughters. Daily they must navigate grief, family dynamics, faith, and perserverance in the face of the unknown… A great strength of this novel is the suspense that underlies each decision, so I will not divulge any more of the “plot” but will end with a few passages of Boesky’s unique candor and perspective:
Upon learning her pregnancy may be difficult:
“I tried to work through the phrase ‘inhospitable womb.’ I was a Midwesterner. I used to bake my teachers cookies in middle school. I joined a sorority in college where we learned how to greet people at the door and serve chocolate fondue with the right-size napkins. How could my womb be inhospitable?”
A few months after giving birth, Amy is invited for a second interview for a tenure-track position at Boston College, which required one night in a hotel, the first night away from her new daughter:
“I had one longing for this visit, and that was for an uninterrupted night of sleep. Guiltily, I’d fantasized about this ever since I agreed to come. I pictured the night beginning luxuriously early, maybe around nine, and slipping through the expansive darkness like a long, quiet train: the billowing fields of ten o’clock and eleven; the gray tunnel of midnight; the smoky mountains of one and two and three o’clock giving way to the golden plains of early morning.”
Even when contemplating her anxieties, Amy manages to be incisive and perceptive:
“It’s a funny thing, fear. How it follows you, changes shape, adapts to each new place and situation. Like furniture, which you carry around and set up in one house after another. It may look a little different in its new place, but it’s still the same stuff.”
“What if months were named for feelings, instead of numbers or emperors or gods? Remorse. Terror. Ire. Today is the seventeenth day of Remorse. Ire has ended. Can you believe it’s Terror again already?”
I think this memoir would be an excellent choice for a book club. Not only would your club love reading it, the philosophical questions raised would result in a fascinating discussion that would interest all.
If you are interested in winning a copy, simply leave me a comment and I’ll choose a lucky winner by Saturday!
Here’s the full list of TLC tour stops:
Monday, August 16th: Heart2Heart
Tuesday, August 17th: Suko’s Notebook
Wednesday, August 18th: Luxury Reading
Thursday, August 19th: Book Club Classics!
Friday, August 20th: not that you asked
Monday, August 23rd: A Nut in a Nutshell
Tuesday, August 24th: Amy’s Creative Side
Wednesday, August 25th: Overstuffed
Thursday, August 26th: Rundpinne
Monday, August 30th: Thoughts of an Evil Overlord
Tuesday, August 31st: Cozy Little House
Wednesday, September 1st: Silver and Grace
Thursday, September 2nd: BookNAround
Friday, September 3rd: Peeking Between the Pages
Tuesday, September 7th: Musings of a Bookish Kitty
Thursday, September 9th: Chaotic Compendiums
Sounds really engrossing! I would love a chance for it…
This book would be an amazing read and I would love to read it.
Interested to know if you feel this would be a good choice for a 50+ year old book club. We’re past having babies and now experiencing being grandparents! Even so, it sounds intriguing.
Sounds very good. I’d love to read it!
sounds great – please count me in on this drawing – please:)
Sounds great, count me in! Thanks.
As I was reading your review I was thinking what a great choice this would be for a book club, and then got to the end where you said it would be! I’ll be suggesting it to mine next time we vote. Thanks so much for being on the tour. It sounds terrific.
Wonderful review of a very well-written, absorbing book! I have already read and reviewed this, so please don’t enter me in the giveaway (I am also hosting a giveaway for this book). This would be perfect for a women’s book club, because it would lead to all sorts of discussions.
I love heartfelt and thought-provoking memoirs and would love to read “What We Have.” As a woman, a mother and a family history of cancer, I can really relate to the subject matter. I would love the chance to experience the author’s perspective.
Sounds great – please include me!
I’d like to read this one.
Thanks for the giveaway.