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What We Have: A Family's Inspiring Story About Love, Loss, And Survival (2010)

by Amy Boesky(Favorite Author)

3.77 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1592405517 (ISBN13: 9781592405510)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Gotham

review 1: Betty said - this is a memoir about the author's family, what they grew up with, what developed in their immediate family. Amy shares a deeply transformative year in her family's life and invites readers to join in their joy, laughter and grief. The immediate family consists of the mother and father, and three daughters who have grown up, finished college and were into their own families. I have three daughters so it was interesting to me to see and appreciate the dynamics between these sisters. The basis for the book is that there has been a long history of ovarian cancer in the family. Now to quote from the book: "It isn't really a cancer story, or a survivor story, though it has cancer and surviving in it. Instead, it's a previvor's story. A previvor is someone... more who doesn't have cancer, but has a known (elevated) risk for it, discovered through family history or through diagnosis with a genetic mutation. That's good news. If you're a previvor, you don't have anything... at least, not yet."The entire family is extremely well educated, and their life stories are very interesting. Also, it has some very emotional chapters and I learned a great deal about cancer over all. To me, it was not a joyful book but a great sharing by the author of her catharsis of living with this history.
review 2: Cancer.It's an ugly word, and an even uglier reality.Nobody likes to think about it, but for some people, like Amy Boesky, it is never far from their thoughts. Amy, her two sisters, her mother, her aunt, her grandmother--all of the female members of her family lived in fear of cancer, and with good reason. Most of them lost their battles with ovarian cancer in their early 40's. They always knew it was just a matter of time before another one of them would be diagnosed with it, too.What We Have is an inspiring memoir about Amy's family and her personal experience as a previvor of cancer. Long before the BRCA1 gene was ever discovered, Amy's family knew that they were genetically predisposed to ovarian cancer. They all took care to have their children before the age of 35 so that they could have their ovaries removed before the cancer inevitably hit. Amy had just had her first child when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, despite having had her ovaries removed years earlier. Soon enough, they learned that the two cancers were linked and Amy and her sisters had yet another type of cancer to worry about.Amy is a professor of English at Boston College, and one of her specialties is timepieces from the 17th century. I absolutely loved how she incorporated her vast knowledge of the subject into the book, and juxtaposed it against the literal race against time that she and her family had run for as long as she could remember.Then, of course, there is the time they actually had. That's what makes this book so wonderful. The way Amy realizes what time she does have, and the way she uses that time to live life to its fullest is truly inspiring.I loved this book. Memoirs aren't usually my favorite, but this story was truly engaging and I honestly couldn't put it down. When I did put it down, I was crying (a lot), and I definitely had much to think about. We really never know when we'll leave this life, or when our loved ones will leave this life, and Amy's unique experience of actually having an inkling about how things might end up was thought-provoking and even reassuring. less

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