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The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks (2010)

by Rebecca Skloot(Favorite Author)

4.03 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1400052173 (ISBN13: 9781400052172)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Crown Publishing Group

review 1: I enjoyed reading this book. I had no prior knowledge of Hela or Henrietta Lacks, and this book really made me think about the ethics behind cellular science. I'm not all that impressed with the way the book ended. Obviously some things happened that couldn't be changed and non-fiction books rarely have endings tied up with a bow, but I guess I was hoping for that happy ending- retribution for her family, concrete proof that the book set into motion good things for Henrietta's family, SOMETHING. It was stated that the author was setting money aside for education for the children, did that happen? Why wasn't there some fund started by someone to help get Deborah's funeral and headstone paid for? I guess I wanted to see instant proof of Henrietta's family benefiting from t... morehis book.
review 2: There is a very moving, informative and almost political story here about a woman, a family, a whole community that was there for the benefit of richer and better-educated white people who left them in the dark. This is sociology as well as medicine.But I felt that Skloot's breathless and excited explanations of her own involvement detracted from this, shifted the focus too much away from Lacks and towards herself.This, then, is a book about Rebecca Skloot as well as about Henrietta Lacks.Perhaps I'm being mean. Skloot had to get involved to find out as much as she did. She was present during a very momentous period for the Lacks family and helped them to understand more about Henrietta than they probably could have discovered alone.But I prefer biographers to maintain a professional detachment, at least in the telling of the story.Her style probably makes the book more accessible to a wider audience, but I found it a bit tiresome reading accounts of Skloot's travels and worries about her car.Overall though, the book covers a tragedy across two or three generations of a family, raises some important questions not just about medical ethics (though these are perhaps the most important ones) but also about race, education and social exclusion. less

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