In this memoir, a Singaporean woman addresses her cancer diagnosis with family support, Western and traditional Chinese medicine, and other means.
In January 2010, Tan Siew Khim, in her late 40s, discovered a lump in her right breast while taking a shower. Though single, Siew Khim was part of a large, close-knit ethnically Chinese family, which rallied to support her once she got up the courage to tell them. Her sisters first took her to a traditional Chinese medicine clinic, then older family members arranged for her treatment at a Singaporean government hospital, where she eventually received chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy. At a family-owned golf/holiday resort, Siew Khim learned the ancient Chinese techniques of physical exercise, breathing and meditation, as well as “yoga, laughter yoga, walking meditation, driving a buggy, photography, dancing, cycling, golf, English, and public speaking.” Two years after the initial diagnosis, she describes her recovery as “a personal choice to get well.” In her debut work, Lee’s thesis is that recovery is a choice: “Any cancer patient can—if he or she chooses to do so—learn to slow and even reverse cancer’s progression in the body.” While some readers may find their experiences or hopes resonate with Siew Khim’s, many more will find the arguments presented here both pernicious and insulting because they continually express the idea that cancer is the patient’s fault: “Instead of letting cancer triumph over her, she reclaimed her life”; “The perfect patient, and one possessed of an inordinately strong will, Siew Khim follows prescribed dietary guidelines”; by “changing her internal dialogue…[t]he cells in her body have started believing it too.” A list of references is supplied, but the ideas are presented uncritically; for example, poor diet and bad mental attitude don’t explain why world-class athletes (who must cultivate both diet and attitude) or infants contract cancer. Nor does Lee take into account the roles Siew Khim’s chemotherapy, surgery and radiation must have played.
While Siew Khim’s recovery is to be applauded, this book is poorly supported and full of magical thinking.
Pub Date: July 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1492345558
Page Count: 108
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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