Dr. Peter Attia’s Outlive, is the mother of all books on longevity and health. He talks about the history and practice of medicine, various illnesses, their causes and treatments, metabolism and its irregularities, diet, exercise, rest, the importance of looking after your health, both physical and emotional, from a young age in order to live long and well.
Attia starts his book by saying he found it challenging to present the results of his expansive research in an accessible way to readers who are not scientifically or medically trained.
This challenge is evident throughout the book. Although Outlive is a treasure trove of information and advice on increasing both life span (how long we live) and health span (how healthy we are in the final decades of our lives), at times it gets too technical about biology and chemistry, proteins and sugars, genetics and metabolism, etc.
Despite that, there’s a lot to be learned from Outlive. Attia develops his book systematically by starting with historical advances in medicine.
He calls the medicine practiced until the 18th century Medicine 1.0. He calls the medicine based on the scientific method, that came up with antibiotics and vaccination and is practiced now, Medicine 2.0. But he argues that although Medicine 2.0 is effective in stopping large number of deaths from communicable diseases (fast death), it is not effective in treating chronic diseases (slow death).
He calls the major chronic diseases of our times the “four horsemen”. These are: cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and type 2 diabetes. He devotes a chapter to each of these horsemen, what medicine knows about them and how far it still has to go.
Attia says Medicine 2.0 waits for the person to get sick and treats the symptoms, not the causes. But by the time we get the symptoms of the four horsemen, it’s often too late to treat them. So, he argues, in the age of chronic disease we need a new approach, which he dubs Medicine 3.0, that focuses on prevention, starting as early in life as possible.
This involves regular visits to the doctor when you’re healthy, regular tests that look for elements not included in routine blood tests and tweaking of every individual’s lifestyle according to the results of their tests. It requires discipline, perseverance and money. Even if you have the first two, cost is still an issue. Insurance companies don’t cover the costs of doctor visits or tests when the person is not sick.
In order to live the last decades of your life in better health Attia offers extensive advice, based on wide-ranging research and personal experience, in four main areas:
Exercise, “The most powerful longevity drug”, with three goals: cardiovascular fitness, muscle building, and stability
Nutrition: right nutritional biochemistry, eating pattern, amount and time for you
Sleep: strategies for good quality and quantity of sleep
Emotional health, which demands the same discipline and amount of work and financial resources as physical health
All of the above only scratches the surface of Outlive. Although Attia sometimes gets bogged down by his own athletic leanings, training and scientific minutiae, he also offers a wide perspective. For example in the chapter “The Crisis of Abundance: Can Our Ancient Genes Cope with Our Modern Diet?” he looks at the big picture of our civilization, how and why our eating habits have evolved and how they counter the basic design and needs of our bodies.
Everything considered, Outlive is a worthwhile read. It will change your views on old age, medicine and life.
Remarkably Bright Creatures is a warm and fuzzy mystery. Contradiction in terms, you say? Not if you’re Shelby Van Pelt and can pull it off. I enjoyed the book because it’s warm and fuzzy, it’s witty, original and quirky. I also enjoyed it because its main protagonist is a 70- year-old woman. There are very few books, movies or series about people over 70. Remarkably Bright Creatures is one of the very few. Besides, it treats its protagonist with respect, without stereotyping or pidgeon-holing her.
Tova Sullivan, 70, has recently lost her husband of over 45 years. The couple’s only son, Erik, disappeared about thirty years ago when he was eighteen, and was never found. The police concluded that he had committed suicide, although his parents disagreed because he was a happy and thriving teenager.
At this stage in her life Tova works a part-time job at nights as the cleaner of an aquarium in Sowell Bay. Although her friends try their best to convince her not to, – she doesn’t need the money, and she’s too old to be on her feet and do physical labor – Tova likes to keep busy. It takes her mind off her loneliness, grief and obsession with the mystery of her son’s disappearance.
At her job she befriends Marcellus, the remarkably bright Pacific octopus, who is an expert at escaping his tank, wandering around the aquarium and collecting coins, earrings and other objects visitors drop in the halls. Marcellus understands human speech, is observant and notices and figures out a lot of things that humans don’t, or can’t be bothered to.
The second storyline is about Cameron, a thirty-year-old ne’er-do-well, whom his mother abandoned when he was 9, and who’s never met his father. Although remarkably bright in some ways, Cameron can never hold down a job or a relationship. He travels from his native California to Sowell Bay in search of his father. When Tova injures her foot, Cameron is hired as the night cleaner and meets Marcellus.
Some chapters are narrated by Marcellus, the most lovable and smart character of the book, who has keen observations about humans and their weird behaviour.
“Humans are the only species who subvert truth for their own entertainment. They call them jokes. Sometimes puns.”
“Why can humans not use their millions of words to simply tell one another what they desire?”
Shelby Van Pelt adds a number of other characters to the mix. Among them are Tova’s gossiping friends, the store owner who has a crush on Tova, Cameron’s love interests and his aunt who raised him. All characters are lovable and kind, and Van Pelt does a great job portraying both their capabilities and idiosyncrasies convincingly. The tone is humorous and light, and the mystery leads the reader by the nose.
Through casual conversations and remarks, gradual revelations are made about the past, but the main catalyst and hero of the day is Marcellus, who despite his limited physical abilities is able to help his friend. “Secrets are everywhere. Some humans are crammed full of them. How do they not explode? It seems to be a hallmark of the human species: abysmal communication skills.”
Although unrealistic and far-fetched in some respects, Remarkably Bright Creatures truthfully portrays the issues the elderly face in the final stages of their lives. But despite its serious themes it is an entertaining, funny and feel-good page-turner and a pleasure to read.
In the past couple of months I read two books written by female authors about women who defied the social norms of their time. Even if they didn’t manage to break the glass ceiling, they bypassed it.
The first book, The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray is based on the life of Belle da Costa Greene, a historical figure who lived and worked in early to mid-twentieth century in New York. Belle was the daughter of Richard Theodore Greener, the first black graduate of Harvard University, an activist and lawyer.
At the urging of her mother, Belle takes advantage of her light complexion, changes her name from Belle Marion Greener to Belle da Costa Green and pretends to be of Portuguese ancestry.
Belle, who fell in love with fine arts and old manuscripts under the influence of her dad, grows up to become an expert in the field. When J.P. Morgan is looking to hire a librarian for his personal library, Belle, a young and petite woman, manages to snag the position from many older, more experienced male competitors.
Under the tutelage of her mother, who encourages all her light-skinned children to pass as white, and trains Belle systematically in how to handle delicate situations when her experience, credentials or ancestry are questioned, Belle manages to maneuver the course of her career. She gradually acquires new skills and insights of her own on how to deal with the demanding and capricious J.P. Morgan, and his acrimonious daughter. Belle becomes an expert both in spotting, finding, and authenticating ancient manuscripts, and in bidding on them in auctions, and negotiating sales contracts. So much so that her boss trusts her with huge sums of his money to acquire manuscripts and art for his personal Pierpont Morgan library. Belle does this while being the only woman in a sea of men, and being extra cautious not to accidentally give away her secret of being black.
The storyline is linear and the writing devoid of any humor. The book mainly concerns itself with Belle’s fear of her true identity being revealed, and thus is a tense read. Through her meteoric success as J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, she gets many promotions and is able to provide many necessities and luxuries for her family. However, she knows how very racist Morgan is and if he finds out she’s black he will fire her with no second thought. Not only will she lose her job, but also she will not be able to find another one, because no one will knowingly hire a black woman for any decent job. Thus her family will lose their high lifestyle.
This fear forces her to sign off on the prospect of marriage, because her children might betray her ancestry. It also forces her to develop various coping mechanisms when Morgan pressures her to attend his family parties, concerts and balls. She also cultivates her patience to deal with Morgan when he is extra stressed and extra capricious, and coddling skills when he needs to be comforted. She is such a resourceful and capable woman that even living under these circumstances she manages to have a forbidden affair with someone who has his own secrets to guard.
What I found more interesting than the fictitious book based on a remarkable historical character was the relationship between its two co-authors, discussed at the end of the book. When Marie Benedict, a white lawyer turned novelist, had the idea to write A Personal Librarian, she felt she would benefit from a black woman’s perspective, in character development, racist social attitudes and language of the time. So she approached Victoria Christopher Murray, a black writer, regarding co-writing the book. And “the rest is history” as they say. The two women formed a lasting deep bond, learned from each other, and discovered a lot about their subject.
The Personal Librarian is a historical fiction about an amazing woman who defies the norms of her day and age to become one of the most powerful women of her time.
The second book I read, Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, is also about a woman defying the stereotypes of her time. But whereas Belle is a historical character, Elizabeth is ficticious. While The Personal Librarian is a tense read, Lessons in Chemistry is light and funny. And while Belle lies all the time in order to succeed, Elizabeth is a compulsive truth-teller sometimes to her own detriment.
The story is about Elizabeth Zott, a PhD Cnadidate in chemistry at the UCLA in 1950s, who is practically kicked out of the program because she stabs her advisor with a pencil while he was sexually assaulting her. The police doesn’t believe her story. Afterall the advisor is male and a professor, wherease she “just” a girl.
Later, while working at the Hastings Institute she meets and falls in love with Calvin Evans, a genius and a famous Nobel Prize nominated chemist. A genius daughter is born of their union.
Hastings kicks Elizabeth out because she becomes pregnant out of wedlock. As a last resort she agrees to be the chef on a cooking show. Despite the recommendations and demands of her bosses to wear sexy clothes and fix cocktails at the end of the show, Elizabeth wears trousers or drab dresses. “She looked like a cross between a hotel maid and a bomb-squad expert,” doesn’t fix cocktails and mixes a lot of explanations on the chemistry of ingredients and why and how they interact with each other. This makes her show a hit. She makes women feel intelligent and empowered to learn and do things other than housekeeping. Elizabeth continues to defy the sexist norms of the society, like she’s impervious to them.
There are many secondary characters in Lessons in Chemistry who help or hinder Elizabeth’s trajectory in life. The genius of Garmus is the extreme qualities she convincingly and humorously injects into them. She’s got super-dumb people and super-smart animals. Of the lecherous and abusive husband of Elizabeth’s friend, Harriet, she writes, “Like most stupid people he wasn’t smart enough to know just how stupid he was.”
My favorite by a long shot was Six-Thirty, Elizabeth’s dog, who picks up her has a vocabulary of over 800 words, to whom Elizabeth reads literature all the time, and who picks up her 5-year-old daughter from school every day. Garmus gives the dog human-like abilities and thoughts. It’s absolutely endearing how Six-Thirty refers to Elizabeth’s baby in her mom’s womb as “the creature”, and how he cares for her. “The dog pressed his head against her thigh begging her not to go any further.” Or how he keeps a running commentary on human behaviour: “Humans were strange Six-Thirty thought. The way they constantly battled dirt when they were above ground, but after death willingly entombed themselves in it. At the funeral he couldn’t believe the amount of dirt needed to cover…coffin and when he saw the size of the shovel he’d wondered if he should offer the help of his back legs to cover the hole.”
Bonnie Garmus, who worked as a copywriter for years, is a master of packing punches with language. She’s concise, candid and witty. In an interview with The Guardian she says she was inspired to write the book after a particularly frustrating meeting at the advertising company she worked for, in which she gave a presentation to male colleagues, had her ideas appropriated by one of them, and was put down as a woman to boot. She wrote the first chapter of the book on that very same day!
Lessons in Chemistry is so meaningfully entertaining that despite being a debut novel it was number 1 on the New York Times, Sunday Times and Der Spiegel best-seller lists, has won multiple awards, has been translated into 42 languages, and turned into a TV miniseries of the same name starring Brie Larson as Elizabeth Zott.
Is it me who keeps stumbling on books with ornithology, or is it the fashion for debut novels to include some neat facts about birds and their habits? The main female characters of the last two books I’ve read were ornithologists, and both books contained some fascinating facts about birds.
Where the Forest Meets the Stars, the debut novel by Glendy Vanderah, is about a
PhD student of ornithology, Joanna Teale. It’s summer and Jo, breast cancer survivor, has immersed herself in field work on indigo bunting nests in an Illinois forest. One night an 8-year-old girl shows up on the driveway of her rented cabin in the woods. She looks like a changeling and claims she’s from another galaxy. No matter how much Jo insists that the girl should go home, she says her home is in the stars. Jo notices the alien is hungry, feels sorry for her, feeds her and calls the police. But as soon as the police arrive the girl runs away. The story is about the gradual forming of a strong bond between the girl, Jo and her neighbour, Gabriel Nash, aka the egg man.
Glendy Vanderah unspools a fascinating tale with three charming characters, by methodically taking turns diving into each one’s past. All three suffered different kinds of trauma, all three developed unique coping mechanisms, and all three can understand and empathize with each other, although it’s not obvious at first.
The story moves at a nice clip with surprises and heart squeezing events. We find out why the good-looking, smart and educated Gabe sells eggs on a country road, why he finds socializing difficult and why he won’t shave his beard. It’s gradually revealed why Jo has a grudge against her former boyfriend and despite knowing that she’s making a mistake lets herself get attached to Ursa, a little girl about whom she doesn’t know anything and cannot find a “missing person” notice on the internet. Gabe who first criticizes Jo for letting Ursa stay with her, does the same thing himself. Both Jo and Gabe notice that Ursa is a genius and it seems that her claim that she has extra-terrestrial powers and can make things happen, is true.
“As the first week of July passed Jo fully entered the fantasy. She gave in to Ursa’s Vortex, the timeless whirl of stars Gabe had named The Infinite Nest. Nothing could touch the three of them in that boundless spin of love. Not their past. Not their futures. But even galaxies don’t last forever. “
There are many other minor characters who come to life vividly to help the three main characters with their predicaments. Tabby, Jo’s eccentric friend, Lacey, Gabe’s mean sister, Kathryn, Gabe’s sick mom, George, the professor Jo rents her cabin from, all are thrown into the mix, sometimes too conveniently to change the course of events.
But the who, what, when, where, why and how of Ursa’s past, a charmer, with astonishing intelligence, mind-blowing abilities, and incredible fortitude of character makes up the real fireworks at the end of the book.
Where the Forest Meets the Stars is a great story that keeps you engaged and entertained throughout, by mixing heartbreak, humor, mystery, romance, science, magic, and tad too much of daily life details.
Sarah Winman’s Tin Man is a short, romantic and sad novel, with a simple plot which is nevertheless poorly organized. What saves it and makes it readable and enjoyable is its inventive, imaginative and emotionally charged language.
The novel starts with a killer opening paragraph: “All Dora Judd ever told anyone about that night three weeks before Christmas was that she won the painting in a raffle.” Said painting, adored by Dora, who valued art and beauty, was a reproduction of Van Gough’s “Sunflowers”. Both the painting in particular, and sunflowers in general, come up through the novel in various parts and carry an emotional heft for the characters. “I rise early with the sun, open the shutters…and let my eyes gaze out onto that shimmering sea of yellow…and as the morning lightens, I watch the sunflowers lift up their heads and learn to decipher their whisper.”
The story is about Dora’s son, Ellis and his close friend, Michael. The first part of the novel is called “Ellis”. In the 60’s in their childhood Michael and Ellis hang out at Ellis’s grandmother, Mabel’s house in Oxfordshire. Up to their early twenties they stick together all the time, exploring the world around them, their bodies and developing a romantic relationship.
Enter Annie, who Ellis falls in love with, and marries. Although Michael is emotionally hurt, the three of them become pees in a pod for a while, until at the advice of Mabel Michael moves away and they lose touch. A number of losses later Ellis becomes a melancholy and lonely middle-aged man, stuck in a dead-end job.
The second part of the novel is called “Michael”. It follows Michael’s life in London, as he nurses his younger boyfriend, G, who has AIDS. Michael stays with G until he dies. This part explores the AIDS epidemic in London in the 1980’s, the suffering, isolation and stigma caused by it, and how friends and family of those affected deal with the pain. Michael turns into a lonely and disconsolate man as well, and finally decides to go back to see Ellis and Annie again.
Winman’s language is lyrical and creative. On being misunderstood she writes: “Billy and his nineteen years understood.” On retirement: “Garvy died a year after retiring. This place had been his oxygen. They reckoned he suffocated doing nothing.” And on loneliness: “He staggered up and felt so much space around him he almost choked.”
Despite her amazing use of language, Winman’s style leaves a lot to be desired.
First, the story is not told sequentially. It jumps back and forth with no apparent reason and without serving a purpose.
Second, she breaks one of the cardinal rules of contemporary North American writing, which is “Show, don’t tell.” After establishing how depressed Michael is because of losing G, and other friends to AIDS, a worker at the restaurant where he works tells him, “People here call you Monsieur Triste, Mister Sad. Did you know that?” and proceeds to invite him to dinner to her house. This offends the readers’ intelligence. It assumes that they weren’t paying attention for the whole second half of the book, or worse, were dumb enough not to notice how miserable Michael was. So Winman adds those lines to make sure they get it.
And finally she uses a tired trick to fill in the missing parts of the story. A diary is discovered in the attic, and that’s how we find out what happened to Michael.
If Tin Man did not have the advantage of the lovely language to carry it, it wouldn’t be worth the read. As it is, a slim volume of slightly over 200 pages, it is readable.
The Weight of Ink is a massive volume that swallows you in and takes you on an imaginary, colorful and meaningful journey through the current politics of academia, and life in a 17th century Jewish community. It also makes you think twice about the truth as you know it.
Hellen Watt, a stern anti-social 60 plus professor of history in London stumbles upon old documents from 17th century, written in Latin and Portuguese. She gets an assistant for three days in the form of 26-year-old American post-graduate student, Aaron Levy. But their co-operation lasts a lot longer than initially planned, and the scripts, almost reluctantly, reveal a fascinating story about their scribe, Ester, a Jewish girl, working for a rabbi in 1660’s England. The 34 chapters of the book alternate between the 21st century and the 17th century London.
The 21st century chapters read like a detective story. They paint a vivid picture of the world of higher academia in the department of history. Men heading the departments compete for money and recognition. Older women are tolerated, but disdained. Any new documents are pounced upon and fought over by different historians looking for fresh material to research and publish about.
Helen Watt’s fierce desire for a last academic swan song, is very well portrayed by her past love-affair, and her present illness. Aaron Levy’s cool and conceited façade masking his lack of confidence and direction is expertly painted. The British-American culture-clash adds entertainment to their rocky relationship.
The 17th century scenes are by far more formidable both in terms of historical research, and descriptive detail. Ester, conscientious, serious and scholarly has found a perfect mentor in the blind rabbi, and he, has found the perfect curious, independent thinking student in his old and frail state. The complicated relationship between the two is developed through the correspondence that the rabbi dictates to Ester, and culminates in a reciprocal heart-wrenching disclosure.
London before the plague, with its polluted streets, bustling markets and packed theatres is contrasted with London after the plague, a ghost-town populated by filthy, deformed, poverty-stricken survivors. Particularly interesting for the reader in the current COVID-19 days are the details about how the government deals with containing the spread of the plague and the burial of the multitude of the bodies, and how people cope with the restrictions placed on them.
Among the myriad of philosophical and social issues explored are the reliability of history, perception of truth, power of the written word, and women as scholars and thinkers.
We’ve heard the axiom “history is written by the victors”, but this novel shows there could be many other interests and hands at work in falsifying everything written from fudging notary records to fabricating historical events. How true then is ancient history written in the Egyptian hieroglyphs or the Sumerian and Persian cuneiforms? By extension how reliable is history in particular and truth in general? Is there a universal truth or does it depend on whose truth with what interests, at what stage of the game we’re talking about?
The weight of ink, is a theme the book repeatedly returns to. How important is the written word? For most of Ester’s life, the weight of ink defines her: “Let there be one place where I exist, unsundered. This page.”
Is the importance of the written word absolute for its staunch believers, or does your body dictate its value? In the throes of her illness, Ester felt that “Blood overmastered ink. And every thin breath she drew told her which ruled her.”
Is there an intrinsic value in reading, thinking and writing or is it the luxury available to and enjoyed by those privileged few who don’t have to worry about paying their own way or somebody else’s in life?
And how easy or even possible is it for a woman to exist “unsundered” and enjoy the weight of ink? Both strong and academic women in the book fight an uphill battle against their gender, society, age and finances. “A woman’s body, said the world, was a prison in which her mind must wither.” Women in the 21st century are not completely free of that prison yet.
All is not serious in The Weight of Ink. Kadish uses humour and playfulness in the sullenness of the two Patricias, the constant restrained banter between Aaron and Helen, the description of their wordless exasperation with each other through raised eyebrows, hunched shoulders, inhalations and exhalations, and the identities of the stone carver and the dark lady.
The book is not without its shortcomings though. Some plot points are a bit too contrived/convenient. Ester’s marriage and her relationship with her husband, both next to impossible, are what let her continue her scholarly pursuits. The long poem penned by Alvaro, sealed and included conveniently in the first, more accessible batch of documents is also a forced plot device. The descriptions, although mostly quite interesting, get a bit long-winded at times.
But overall Rachel Kadish creates two distinct vibrant worlds and lures you in so deftly and smoothly, that 550 pages later you don’t even know what hit you.
In The Golden Mean Annabel Lyon successfully strikes the golden mean between history and literature. Unlike a similar endeavour by Irvin Yalom, The Spinoza Problem, which was a solely intellectual novel about Spinoza, a 17th century philosopher, Lyon’s is a literary novel about Aristotle, a philosopher in 4th century BC. She succeeds in making him and a few people around him multi-dimensional human beings with believable relationships. She adds in a nice dose of beautiful language too.
The title is one of the main tenets of Aristotle’s philosophy. The golden mean is the balance between two extremes, or simply put, observing moderation in behaviour. It proves easier said than done, both for the main protagonist and others, thus demonstrating the elusive quality of its ideal.
The story, told in first person from Aristotle’s point of view, is about the seven years he spent as one of the tutors of Alexander the Great. It starts with Aristotle, his wife and nephew moving to King Philip’s court in Pela, when he is hired by King Philip to tutor his young son, Alexander. It develops the close relationship and love between Aristotle, a seasoned teacher and thinker, and Alexander, a child prodigy. It explores both men’s psychology: Aristotle’s “sickness”, which comes across as depression and the ambitious genius, Alexander’s cantankerous excesses.
It also creates a believable circle of well-developed characters with meaningful interactions. Pythias, Aristotle’s quiet and brooding wife, Philip the king taken by his political and military exploits, Arrhidaeus, Alexander’s retarded half-brother, and Athea, the slave with supernatural powers, just to name a few.
In detailed flashbacks the story also paints the picture of Aristotle’s childhood, the shock of losing his parents at a young age, and his life under the guardianship of Proxenus, his sister’s husband.
One of the main strengths of the novel is the expert portrayal of the politics in the upper echelons of the Macedonian society. Aristotle has to handle his philosophical teachings judiciously both with the spoilt prince, Alexander, and his circle of friends. Being only one of Alexander’s many tutors, Aristotle needs to coordinate and balance his approach with the other prominent tutors too. He has to also navigate his way cautiously as a Greek in the Macedonian court, especially when Philip goes to war with Athens.
Another main asset of the novel is Lyon’s delicious language.
Of Aristotle’s and Philips’s relationship she writes, “Ours was an odd friendship, with respect and contempt barely distinguishable. I was smart and he was hard: that was what the world saw, and what we saw and liked and disliked in each other.”
In describing a state funeral, “Ritual sacrifices, funerary games, full pomp and honours in the high, golden, late-afternoon summer sunlight, pollen twinkling in the air all around.”
The novel is not without its drawbacks though. The main one is it’s too busy.
Despite the list of 43 names and the description of who they are in the beginning of the book, the mostly unfamiliar, 3-syllable Greek and Macedonian names become confusing at times. This is especially true when they are linked to equally unfamiliar locations or events. To make it worse, all those characters are not really essential. The story could be as meaningful without many of them.
Said characters engage in numerous unimportant peripheral encounters, meetings, background interactions and affairs, some of which are unnecessary and crowd the story. Olympias’s visit to Alexander, Aristotle’s party, and the details of long road trips from one location to another could have been easily omitted or shortened.
Overall, despite its few shortcomings, The Golden Mean is well-crafted historical fiction which also scratches your philosophical itch.
Given that studies show one in two Canadians living today are going to get cancer, David Maginley’s book, Beyond Surviving, about how to live your life from the time you or a loved one are diagnosed with cancer, is beyond timely.
And given that Maginley holds a degree in philosophy, is an ordained Lutheran minister, therapeutic touch practitioner, inter-faith councilor, and a four-time cancer survivor, he is more than qualified to write about the topic.
He doesn’t sugarcoat his experiences or try to portray himself as brave, strong or heroic.
He writes in detail about the worry, fear, pain and suffering he experienced. He writes about his feelings before, during and after each of the four surgeries and the subsequent treatments he went through.
But most importantly he tries to guide you to see beyond cancer, and work on your inner self to evolve as a human being.
In a way he reminds me of a late close friend who was diagnosed with breast cancer, had it removed, went through radiation therapy and finally was told her cancer was in remission. When she came back to work, despite still being in pain, and suffering severe burns on her back as a result of radiation therapy, she told me, “This cancer was the best thing that happened to me in my life!” Her reason was that the cancer changed her perspective and set her priorities straight. She lived the three years she got between the remission and the recurrence of her cancer, this time spread to her lymphatic nodes, which took her life, consciously, enjoying and being grateful for every moment.
Maginley’s interpretation of this phase in one’s life is, “Don’t waste the crisis.” Cancer can help you self-analyze, find love and compassion where you didn’t know it existed, repair your relationships and engage the psycho-spiritual wisdom you are wired with.
This is how he steps in with his counseling to patients who ask for it, to guide them from where they are in their lives to the next stage of psycho-spiritual development. Although he is a Lutheran minister, he is an inter-faith counselor and offers his services equally to both those who believe in a higher power and those who don’t.
Maginley is also a therapeutic touch practitioner. Therapeutic touch is an ancient healing method, in which the practitioner passes her/his hands over the body of a patient focusing on intention, awareness and the breath. Its result is relieving the pain and anguish of the patient, helping her/him relax, and respond positively to treatment. Maginley describes it as, “Clinical application of a spiritual phenomenon designed for use in hospitals.” Chapter 14 is full of examples and studies on therapeutic touch. Seventy universities in North America and others, in over 100 countries all over the world, offer courses on therapeutic touch to their nursing students.
There’s an interesting section on consciousness, energy and the meridians through which it runs. Various healing methods like therapeutic touch, acupuncture, shiatsu and reiki are based on this theory. Maginley talks about controlling, emitting and receiving this energy, and how it helps patients deal with both physical and psychological ravages of cancer. This topic is supported with scientific references to quantum physics including discoveries of Shrodinger and Bohr, and Maginley’s own experiences in therapeutic touch practice, with his patients.
He calls himself a near death experiencer and talks at length about Near Death Experiences. He vigorously and logically rebuffs the claim that they are mere hallucinations. He makes strong arguments to prove that NDEs are legitimate and mostly positive experiences, completely different from hallucinations, by contrasting various facets of NDEs recorded in different time periods in history and across a great number of cultures to those of hallucinations, thus showing their differences.
Every section in the book is geared towards how to use your time and energy to ask important questions about your life, your relationships and your priorities, and how to emerge as a better version of yourself. And how to do all of the above while you’re dealing with cancer.
The only thing I didn’t enjoy in Beyond Surviving was its frequent quotes from the Bible, especially at the end of the book. The frequent references to one religious source weaken Maginley’s claim of being an inter-faith councilor.
Overall, despite its main topic of cancer and death, Beyond Surviving is not only far from depressing, it’s convincingly hopeful, uplifting and empowering.
Nazanine Hozar’s debut novel, Aria, has been hailed as an exceptional first work. Hozar counts heavyweights no less than John Irving as her biggest fans.
Aria is bound to pull at your heartstrings. Its protagonist is an abused orphan, two of its main characters are gay men in a country where homosexuality is forbidden, and a constant threat of arrest and torture hangs over the heads of many of its other characters. Who can resist a story with these ingredients?
The novel is about Aria, an abandoned orphan in Tehran, who is adopted by Behrouz, a gay man, married to Zahra, an older and bitter woman. Zahra wrongly suspects that Aria is Behrouz’s child from an extra-marital affair. She resents Aria, regularly locks her out, beats and starves her.
Through sheer luck Aria is adopted by Fereshteh, a single, rich and benevolent woman, who changes the course of her life. Aria is sent to school, graduates university, marries a man she loves and has a daughter. Meanwhile she also gets to know her birth mother, a troubled but kind woman.
As someone who was born and grew up in Tehran I enjoyed the detailed descriptions of people, places, relationships, lifestyles and ceremonies. The story is interesting and the plight of different characters draws you in.
However, Hozar bites off more than she can chew. The novel covers a long and varied time-period in the recent history of Iran, from the US and Britain-backed coup-d’etat against prime-minister Mossadegh in 1953 to a couple of years past the Islamic revolution of 1979. It touches on religious fanaticism, prejudice and prosecution against Zoroastrians, Jews, Bahais and Armenians, atheism, and moderate piety and charity. It also explores various political factions like Communists, Tudehs, royalists and Islamists. It tackles racism, sexism and classism, with the rich people of North Tehran looking down on the poor masses from the South City.
While some of these issues are covered realistically and credibly, others, like a child with blue eyes being considered a demon, or the extreme prejudice against the Zoroastrians are exaggerated for dramatic effect.
While certain characters are well developed, many are not. It’s not clear why Zahra, who hates and tortures Aria for a long time, suddenly changes course. Aria’s compliance/conformism towards the end of the book is in stark contrast with her rebellious nature throughout the novel.
While some relationships make sense, others are incomplete. The short-lived romantic relationship between Behrouz and Ramin is not enough to justify the sacrifice that Ramin is prepared to make for Behrouz. There’s no indication as to why Ramin’s parents stop visiting their son in prison.
While certain details are credible, others seem either convenient or far-fetched. The chance meeting of Aria and Fereshteh, which completely overhauls Aria’s life, is just too convenient for the plot.
How is it possible for a prisoner, in the notorious Evin prison of Tehran, to get hundreds of dollars a month without being detected? How is it possible to stash all the money inside the prison, without being caught, or the money being stolen by a third party, regardless of who the prisoner is friends with? How is it possible for people to part with the money that can put to very good use for their own needs, and donate it to a third party?
Although Aria makes for an interesting read, its scope is too wide to be handled adequately and the details are not always worked out believably.
You learn a lot about the state of affairs in today’s Russia, reading Keith Gessen’s A Terrible Country. He somewhat debunks the image of the boogeyman Russia, and presents a much more layered, complicated, often self-contradictory facets of Russian people, politics and leaders.
The story is about Andrei Kaplan, a Jewish Russian young man, who emigrated to the states as a child, got his PhD in Russian literature from the U.S., couldn’t land a job in academia and returns to Russia at the request of his only older brother, Dima, to care for his elderly grandmother. The brother is a former successful businessman in Russia who is currently being sued and prefers not to be in the country.
Having heard horror stories of communist USSR from his parents, and having grown up and been educated in the U.S., Andrei returns to Moscow with certain preconceived ideas and expectations, most of which are proven wrong.
But that doesn’t mean that Russia is a good or comfortable country to live in. Andrei recounts how things that are straightforward and easy to do in the US, are complicated and difficult in Russia. Buying a regular sweater for his grandmother turns out to be very difficult. Finding a hockey team to play on, becomes a maze. But that, of course, is partly because he’s an outsider, unfamiliar with social cues and conventions, and not in full command of the nuances of the language.
The novel is somewhat autobiographical. Gessen was born in a Russian Jewish family, emigrated to the US, studied there and went back to Russia to take care of his grandmother for a while.
Gessen paints a vivid picture of Moscow, its tortured intellectuals and dissidents, its well-dressed business class, sipping impossibly expensive cappuccinos in myriad chic cafes of the capital, the regular people who can only afford to buy provisions from street vendors, its overt racism, the courtyards where people sit down to chat over a bottle of beer, the sushki, the kasha, the kotleti, the borscht, the tea…
He describes a capitalist political system, from which many people benefit. But there’s also those who have lost everything with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then there are the idealistic socialists and anarchists who want their voices heard and risk life and limb for it.
But that doesn’t mean that as Andrei’s grandmother keeps repeating Russia is “A Terrible Country.”
Gessen portrays human relationships with a different hue and higher degree of tenderness from the one we’re used to. Andrei gets pistol-whipped for no reason by the boyfriend of a girl he meets in a club one night. When the boyfriend, the son of a high-ranking politician, shows up as a guest player on the opposite hockey team Andrei plays on, and Andrei picks a fight with him, a tough, arrogant player on the opposite team sides with Andrei. When Andrei thanks the aggressive, unfriendly player, the latter is matter-of-fact about it. He tells Andrei the guest player was wrong and Andrei was right, and there’s no question about that.
Nokolai, a fellow hockey player, constantly nags Andrei to help him renovate his dacha. But when Andrei asks him to lend him the dacha so he can take his grandmother there, Nikolai readily agrees.
When Andrei and his older brother, the tough, macho Dima, move their grandmother from her apartment despite her mild objections, both men cry.
There’s humor in the book too. Like when Andrei explains how profanities are turned into verbs in the lingo of some Russians. And how this sometimes totally clouds the meaning, even for those who use this language themselves.
I have to also mention a number of things that I disliked about the book. The narrator, Andrei, is annoying. He’s had the privilege of being highly educated in the US, but he lacks self-confidence and is a whining, jealous, finger-pointing, blaming, endlessly complaining young man. Although realistic, at times this voice gets under your skin and you want to grab him, give him a good shake and scream enough!! Get over yourself!
The plot is pretty much flat until Part 2, when Andrei finally finds a hockey team that allows him to play.
Another thing I didn’t like about the book is that it’s packed with unnecessary details, that don’t serve any purpose. There’s no significance to what Andrei packed in the bag which he took to the hospital for his grandma. Even less significance to which bag he packed it in.
The plumbing problem that happens on the day of his grandma’s birthday party is another example. Gessen spends about half a chapter detailing the steps Andrei takes to fix it.
Some other details, which are about Russia’s literary past, like Pushkin’s life or Marina Tsvetaeva’s ordeals are informative, but have nothing to do with the story.
A Terrible Country will appeal to readers who want to find out about life in contemporary Russia, but as a piece of literature it’s nothing to write home about.
Alternate Perspective 