What We Have: A Family#s Inspiring Story About Love, Loss, and Survival
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Product Description
The stirring right tale of a woman who chose fearlessness in the face of a fatal family tree legacy and learned the pleasure of living each moment to its fullest
At thirty-two, Amy Boesky thought she had it all figured out: a wonderful new man in her life, a fantastic job, and the (nearly) perfect home. For once, she was nearly able to shake the terrible dread that had gripped her for as long as she could remember. Women in her family tree had permanently died young-from cancer-and she and her sisters had grown up in time’s shadow. It colored every choice they made and was beginning to come to a head now that each of them approached thirty-five-the deadline their doctors prescribed for having preventive surgery with the hope they could thwart their family tree’s medical curse. But Amy didn’t want to dwell on that now. She wanted to plot for a new baby, live her life. And with the appreciation for life’s smallest pleasures, she did just that. In What We Have, Amy shares a deeply transformative year in her family tree’s life and invites readers to join in their joy, laughter, and grief.
In a right tale as compelling as the best in women’s fiction, written with the level-headedness of Joan Didion and the elegance of Amy Bruise, Amy Boesky’s journey celebrates the promise of a full life, even in the face of uncertainty.
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What We Have, a memoir by Amy Boesky, is a look into the life of a young woman who grew up with the threat of cancer hanging over her head. Grandmothers, aunts, and fantastic-aunts, all of whom died in their 40’s from ovarian cancer, made a shadow of dread that followed her every step. She knew at 35 she would have her ovaries removed, just as her mother did. When her mother developed breast cancer, she and her sisters breathed a sigh of relief–it was not the deadly ovarian cancer.
Amy allows her readers to know the fears she grew up with and see how it shaped her personality and her life. You share with her the joys and tears of things now and things past. The tale is perfectly natural fiber with the past interlacing with the present and building the future.
I laughed, I cried. I felt like Amy was my best friend. I grieved along with her. I shared in her joys. I understood her fears. I felt like I was part of her world and didn’t want to place the book down. This is an enchanting memoir that tops my list of must reads.
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from Penguin Group for review purposes. This review contains my honest opinions.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Despite my expectation of a familiar genre piece, the inspirational memoir, I was stunned to find in this work a tale told with rare power. A page turner, it soon had me keen to rush yet to be, wanting the leader to speak more rapidly, to quickly tell me what came next. That was so with the losses and tears as well as the pleasures and laughter.
With writing of such uncommon emotional immediacy, the effect is intensely evocative, for everything is shown and nothing is pedantically clarified. During the reading, the world of the book becomes alive as one’s own personal universe. With both pain and joy natural fiber through this right tale, the reader – certainly this reader – was sad to have the book end, sad that the leader’s unwritten next book is not straight away available to permit continuing reading.
This is a life. It is a memoir that can hold its own with most contemporary novels. For me, it was an unanticipated classic.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
I cannot recommend this book enough. Perfectly written, heartbreakingly touching and moving, and yet also extremely inspiring and life affirming. I establish myself so deeply affected and stirred that I was unable to place this book down for two days, and especially towards the end establish myself crying repeatedly. Although it may have affected me more than some because my own mother has been fighting ovarian cancer for four years, and thus I especially identified with the tale, I would be hardpressed to find anyone not loving this book as I have. Especially moving was the scene near the end with her daughter Libby looking at the family tree pictures of her mother, grandmother, and aunt, and recalling the leader’s family tree pictures of her grandmother Sylvia. Lacking hestitation I give this book five stars.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
What would you do if your family tree was genetically predisposed to cancer? Would you live your life in dread of developing the disease or would you live every day as if it were your last?
This is the backdrop against which leader and English professor, Amy Boesky, has lived her life. The women in her family tree have what can only be described as a generational curse ~ by the age of forty~five all of them renovate and ultimately die from ovarian cancer.
This memoir is a touching tribute to the women in her family tree and their attempts to live life to the fullest even in the face of overwhelming odds. Boesky’s entire life was built on a “simple” plot: go to college, marry, have babies and remove ovaries before thirty~five. But her whole life was turned upside down when the possibility of genetic hard became an option. Should she and her sisters get the test? They already know that they carry the gene for ovarian cancer but with the death of their mother, they establish out they also carried the gene for breast cancer. What does this mean for their daughters?
Written with a mix of dread, humor and wistfulness, I establish this book to be heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time. My heart ached for Amy’s family tree as she discussed the legacy of death that envelopes her family tree but I also cheered as they embraced their family tree history and stirred forwards. One of the more poignant moments in the book was when Amy returned home after she had breast surgery and her daughters, warned not to jump on her, stood back staring at her with dread in their eyes. I remember when I came home from my surgery after thyroid cancer and my own babies looked at me with that same dread and I cried. This book is an emotional roller coaster that will cause you to look at “what we have” and realize that it is not the things that matter but the time spent with family tree and friends.
Disclosure: I received this book free from Penguin Group in exchange for a review. I am not required to write a positive review, just an honest one.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
What We Have is a memoir about leader, Amy Boesky and growing up and having every waking moment all ears on if this is the day she would be diagnosed with cancer? This is a survivor tale but as Mrs. Boesky clarifies not in the sense that she is a cancer survivor but a “previvor”. A previvor is a name who doesn’t have cancer but has an elevated risk for having it, either through a family tree history or by diagnosis with a genetic mutation. Being a previvor I reflect is nearly worse then having cancer. The thought of permanently wondering would drive me crazy.
I liked this book. I loved traveling down memory lane with Amy was fun. It is permanently nice to learn where an leader came from and what inspired them. I got all this from this book and more. Amy lived her life to the fullest, never really letting the doubts of cancer over shadow her, even when she gave birth to her daughter. Amy was the only one I felt a tie with as this book was told by her words. Overall, I liked this book but I won’t say I was in like with it. What We Have does make you appreciate what you have and for living in the moment. What you have is a pretty fine novel on your hands.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5