A very solemn look at cancer through the lens of art, literature, pop culture, and personal experience.

I happened to be reading this book during the same week that I started watching Grey’s Anatomy for the first time ever. The show really humanizes the medical profession from the angle of the professionals themselves, and Boyer’s book does that same thing from the other side of the hospital bed. One comment she makes in the book is how she’s never seen a painting from the prospective of a sick person in bed, and her project is basically that.

There’s also an anti-capitalist bend in The Undying, which is cool. She critiques many of the ways the industry profits off of pain and illness. As a single mother (she’s 40ish with a 12 year old daughter), she wonders and worries about those who are single, older, poor, etc. because rates of survival are lower. A lot of the out-patient stuff (which includes double-mastectomies somehow?) assumes that you’ll have someone at home to help care for you.