What We Have: A Family's Inspiring Story About Love, Loss, And Survival (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
A well-written and moving account of a cancer "previvor" wrestling with her family history during the discovery of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes and the development of genetic testing for breast and ovarian cancer. I perhaps would have been interested in more emphasis on the process of making her decisions regarding whether or not to have prophylactic surgeries or genetic testing, and was at times anxious to get back to that story line. Still, Amy develops story lines around her daughters, mother, and sisters in loving detail without masking the complexity, frustration, and pain of those relationships. This book is a touching account of three generations of women grappling with what has been passed to them, and what, for better or for worse, they will pass on. An amazing memoir. I love the way the author captured how relationships change over time. My favorite quote....“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.”Or the one that touched my heart even more because i have not lost a parent to cancer .....“These days, the world for me was divided in two: people who had lost a parent (and understood) and people who hadn’t. Much as I loved Jacques, he was still in the other camp. His father was alive and well at eighty, his mother, amazingly fit and healthy at seventy-four. It changed the way he saw things. He felt like he had nothing but time. And by extension, like we had nothing but time.”
What do You think about What We Have: A Family's Inspiring Story About Love, Loss, And Survival (2010)?
This one has sad and happy parts. It's a bit overwrought but compelling for all that.
—monkey1991
Inside look at a family dealing with hereditary cancer.
—Jenny
Really great memoir. Touching, funny, sad; very real.
—Krys
