Summary:

This book contains 17 short stories, all set in an in-patient hospice, all exploring the reactions of patients and their caregivers--both family members and professionals--to the last stages of terminal illness. A woman struggles to find the strength to write last letters to her loved ones, nurses are surprised when a seemingly unconscious patient suddenly joins in their conversation; the hospice chaplain becomes a patient; and so on. In the title story, a dying woman's daughter finally manages to answer honestly when her mother asks when death will come: "Soon."

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Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov wakes up one morning and discovers that his nose is missing. At the same time in another part of St. Petersburg, Kovalyov's barber finds the nose in his breakfast roll. However, the barber, desiring to disassociate himself from the strange incident, proceeds to toss the nose into the Neva River. A little later, Kovalyov happens to see his nose riding in an elegant carriage and wearing the uniform of a State Councillor (a higher rank than Collegiate Assessor). He demands that the nose give itself up, but is rudely rebuffed.

At first neither the police nor the newspaper offer any help, but later a police officer, who happened to observe the barber throwing an object into the river, returns the lost nose to Kovalyov. However, a new problem arises. How will he re-attach the nose to his face? For this he consults a doctor, who recommends letting nature take its course, "it's best to stay as you are, otherwise you'll only make it worse." Poor nose-less Kovalyov! He becomes the laughing stock of St. Petersburg, until one morning he wakes up and finds his nose re-attached firmly to his face.

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P., a music teacher, whose associates have questioned his perception, is referred by his ophthalmologist to the neurologist Oliver Sacks. During the first office visit, Sacks notices that P. faces him with his ears, not his eyes. His gaze seems unnatural, darting and fixating on the doctor's features one at a time. At the end of the interview, at which his wife is present, P. appears to grasp his wife's head and try to lift it off and put it on his own head. "He had . . . mistaken his wife for a hat!" She gave no sign that anything odd had happened.

During the second interview, at P.'s home, P. is unable to recognize the rose in Sacks' lapel, describing it as "a convoluted red form with a linear green attachment." He is encouraged to speculate on what it might be, and guesses it could be a flower. When he smells it, he comes to life and knows it. The wife explains that P. functions by making little songs about what he is doing--dressing, washing or eating. If the song is interrupted he simply stops, till he finds in his sensorium a clue on how to proceed.

This cantatory method of compensating allows P. to function undetected in his professional and personal life. He remains unaware that he has a problem. Sacks chooses not to disturb his ignorant bliss with a diagnosis. Though his disease (never diagnosed but hypothesized as a tumor or degeneration of the visual cortex) advances, P. lives and works in apparent normalcy to the end of his days.

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Paula Henning (Franka Potente) is a brilliant medical student from Munich, who comes second in the Robert Koch competition winning a place at the prestigious Heidelberg medical school. Medicine is a family tradition, but Paula has little respect for her father's boring suburban practice. Instead, she takes inspiration from her dying grandfather, an academic doctor, who celebrates her decision.

En route to Heidelberg she meets the stunningly beautiful and highly sexed Gretchen (who stood first in the competition) and David, a 22 year-old lad with cardiomyopathy and multiple piercings. Gretchen is interested in partying; Paula is serious, studies all the time, and ignores fellow student Caspar (Sebastian Blumberg) who strives for her attention. When David appears on the dissecting table with no obvious cause of death and "rubbery blood," Paula begins investigating. She determines his death is due to Promidal--a drug developed by The Anti-Hippocratic Society (or "AAA!").

This clandestine group engages in unethical anatomical research on living subjects to "better" the human race. Her classmates scorn her conspiracy theory, but she is drawn deeper into the mystery when Gretchen disappears only to reappear as a perfectly dissected, plasticized cadaver. Paula nearly succumbs to the same fate with her lover, Caspar (who turns out to be an incognito history student writing his thesis on the AAA! ). The ending is happy, although Paula must reckon with the discovery that her venerated grandfather was a member of the "AAA!".

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This is a massive study of Paris and of Notre Dame set in the fifteenth century, but written from the viewpoint of the nineteenth century. Hugo gives us not only the magnificence and the horrid secrets of the great cathedral, but the boisterous city over which it stood. Quasimodo, the legendary hunchbacked bellringer of the great church, is the title character.

But the reader is also treated to a small group of individuals, including a high-ranking priest, a beautiful dancing street entertainer, a soldier of fortune, an itinerant poet, and a grieving mother whose lives are intricately woven together in the often painful plot line. The author, obviously deeply entrenched in the history of his city, gives his readers a dense, sometimes chaotic, trip through medieval Paris in all of its allure and its sordidness as his carefully crafted characters come together and gradually destroy one another and/or themselves.

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As the narrator, an "outcast among outcasts," begins to recount his story, he cautions the reader that "William Wilson" is not his real name; he doesn't want the page to "be sullied with my real appellation." The miserable man tells of his childhood and his life at school, where he encountered another boy who looked exactly like himself and had the same name and birthday.

All the children at school recognized the narrator's preeminence among them, except for this strange double. While the first William Wilson was aggressive, witty, and imperious, the double presented himself as quiet, gentle and wise--but unthreatened. In the end their feelings towards each other "partook very much of positive hatred."

Many years later, as the narrator was busily engaged in cheating at a game of cards, the second William Wilson suddenly appeared out of nowhere and revealed Wilson's scam to everyone present. Subsequently, time after time, just as Wilson was about to achieve some nefarious end, this anti-Wilson unerringly stepped in and destroyed Wilson's chances.

The last straw occurred in Rome during Carnival; just as Wilson was about to seduce a married woman, his double arrived to squelch the affair. Wilson flew into a rage and killed his nemesis, only to discover he had stabbed a mirror--but the dying image in the mirror whispered, " . . . How utterly thou hast murdered thyself."

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Summary:

These fourteen sonnets interweave themselves to form a unified work, just as lines are repeated or echoed to interweave in the individual poems, providing an account of the author’s experience of breast cancer, radical mastectomy, and recovery. The medical details appear more prominently in the early sonnets, but gradually, other themes take precedence: suffering and how to compare relative degrees of suffering among individuals and groups; the reaction of oneself and one’s lovers to a disfigured body; and the search for affirmation, for a reason to want to live and be rid of the horror of disease and death.

Note: A relevant Web site about and by artist-model Matuschka, http://www.songster.net/projects/matuschka/, has been annotated in the art section of this database (Matuschka: Matuschka Archive).

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Summary:

Art Myers is not only an art photographer but also a physician who specializes in preventive medicine and public health. Having experienced breast cancer in members of his own family, including his wife, he began to see the disease in a new light and undertook this photographic project to show that for a woman, the loss of part or all of her breast need not be a threat to her being.

In addition to the artistic nude photographs of thirteen different women from a variety of backgrounds there are meaningful personal vignettes and beautiful poetry by Maria Marrocchino. Some of the photographs show women with significant others. The women present their bodies and themselves with humor, sadness, vulnerability and honesty.

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Summary:

At the age of 37, artist/photographer (and former model), Matuschka, was diagnosed with breast cancer. While her most famous response to the disease was her startling photograph on the cover of The New York Times Magazine revealing the results of mastectomy, her political activism surrounding breast cancer took many forms. (The photograph can be viewed at a Web site, Matuschka Archives )

Not only did she have a disease to confront, she felt she had the responsibility to "take on the establishment." She wrote, "My extensive research and understanding of how cancer works and how breast cancer therapies don’t--in addition to my medical nightmare with my doctor (I was first underdiagnosed, then overtreated)--I felt I had other messages to convey."

Thus, her essay describes her ongoing project: not hiding or concealing the condition, but becoming sexy and strong as a result; and reaching middle America with her images to promote breast cancer awareness, education, treatment, and prevention. Artistically and politically, she was determined to project images of women after surgery as whole people with a scar, not the decapitated torsos of medical illustration and other media that give "too much weight to the ’deformity’ that accompanies breast cancer surgery."

The essay chronicles the difficulties she had in finding sites for publication of her work, including her photo/biography, Beauty Out of Damage, and the continuing harsh criticism that she receives, much of it from "mastectomy women." In turn, she continues her harsh criticism against what she calls "backlash in the breast cancer movement," such as mixing political action with consumerism (e.g. Ralph Lauren’s "Target Breast Cancer" t-shirts that put targets on women), or mixing modeling with breast cancer activism (Cindy Crawford modeling the t-shirt rather than women who have had breast cancer modeling the shirt), among many other examples.

Her closing lines summarize the intent of her activism: "to inspire others to become involved in revolutionizing the medical profession, particularly in regard to women’s cancers. After seeing the film of my mastectomy operation, my only reply was, ’No one should ever have to go through this.’"

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In fourteenth century France, a 15 year old virgin, Blanche, levitates in church and nine months later gives birth to a daughter named Bonne. When Bonne is only 12 years old, Blanche is burned alive along with other "sinners" in a church. Bonne becomes a professional breast-feeder or "wet nurse." Her breast milk never stops flowing and seems to have restorative powers.

She finds herself catapulted from outcast to saint despite a series of catastrophes. When her town of Villeneuve is under siege and starving, she breast feeds not just children but many of the townspeople as well, asking only to listen to the individual's life story in exchange for her milk. Bonne's fate becomes deeply entangled with the lives of three friends: Godfridus (a chaste sculptor who goes mad), Hercules Legrand (a dwarf), and Radegonde Putemonnoie (a wealthy pregnant widow who hires Bonne).

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