The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath | Book Review
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath Genres: American Literature, Fiction, Illness Original Publication Date: 1963 Source: I purchased this book Goodreads Find the Author: Website, Goodreads, Amazon In The Bell Jar, a vulnerable young woman wins a dream assignment on a big-time New York fashion magazine and finds herself plunged into a nightmare. An autobiographical account of Sylvia Plath’s own mental breakdown and suicide attempt, The Bell Jar is more than a confessional novel, it is a comic but painful statement of what happens to a woman’s aspirations in a society that refuses to take them seriously… a society that expects electroshock to cure the despair of a sensitive, questioning…
Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker (1962) | Book Review
Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker Genres: American Literature, Fiction, Illness, LGTBQ Original Publication Date: Originally published 1962 Source: I purchased this book Goodreads Find the Author: Goodreads, Amazon Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley: gay, brilliant, nerve-racked, and miserable. At the beginning of this novel, she drives back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging the wedding. Her Sister Is Getting Married Cassandra and Judith are 24-year-old twins. Up until the last nine months, they had shared almost everything together. That…
I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg | Book Review
I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg Genres: American Literature, Fiction, Illness Original Publication Date: 1964 Goodreads Find the Author: Website, Goodreads, Amazon A modern classic, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden remains every bit as poignant, gripping, and relevant today as when it was first published. Enveloped in the dark inner kingdom of her schizophrenia, sixteen-year-old Deborah is haunted by private tormentors that isolate her from the outside world. With the reluctant and fearful consent of her parents, she enters a mental hospital where she will spend the next three years battling to regain her sanity with the help of a gifted psychiatrist. As Deborah…
Brain on Fire: My Month Of Madness by Susannah Cahalan | Book Review
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan Genres: Illness, Medicine, Memoir, Non-Fiction Original Publication Date: 2012 Source: I purchased this book Goodreads Find the Author: Website, Goodreads, Amazon Brain on fire: One day in 2009, twenty-four-year-old Susannah Cahalan woke up alone in a strange hospital room, strapped to her bed, under guard, and unable to move or speak. A wristband marked her as a “flight risk,” and her medical records—chronicling a month-long hospital stay of which she had no memory at all—showed hallucinations, violence, and dangerous instability. Susannah had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: a healthy, ambitious college grad a few months into…
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot | Book Review
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot Genres: Biography, Illness, Medicine, Science Original Publication Date: 2010 Source: I purchased this book Goodreads Find the Author: Website, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon, Instagram Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer,…
