RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksCregan affirms the medical and social belief that suicidal depression is not a normal response to loss, no matter how grievous that loss. Perhaps because of my own tendencies, it took a fair amount of persuasion to convince me, but persuade me Cregan did ... Cregan poignantly demonstrates the hard-won pragmatism of those who have battled mental illness...Confronting public fears of shock treatment, she ultimately responds with a shrug — it’s not that dangerous, it’s not even that invasive, and it saves lives. My sentiments exactly ... In addition to exploring character, Cregan’s book argues that literary, poetic, and mythological context can help us survive depression ... While reading The Scar, you break when Cregan breaks, you heal when she fully returns to life. These eternal patterns — day following night, spring following winter, hope following madness — will resonate with any reader while offering affirmation for those peculiarly bound by these cycles. In providing kinship to its fellow traveler, The Scar becomes the best sort of memoir—one that serves a higher purpose
Randi Hutter Epstein
PositiveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksWhere the book really takes off is in its pointed examination of how social norms and sexual politics have interacted with new discoveries in science ... Aroused shows how hormone and surgical therapies hardened a binary gender system ... Ultimately, the message of Aroused is that we know a lot about hormones, but definitely not everything, which might well have been its subtitle. Enter the quacks, frauds, careless researchers, and others looking for quick payoffs from new discoveries. In nearly every chapter, Epstein stresses the vulnerability of new scientific information about the maintenance of the human body to industry objectives ... Epstein’s dry wit is put to best use in her chapter on menopause ... she does offer some encouraging news: a few years of hormone therapy to ease the symptoms of menopause is unlikely to hurt you. The establishment has been back and forth on that point a few times, and, she acknowledges, who knows? It may swing the other way again. We have to muddle through with the research we’ve got at the moment. If that isn’t exactly comforting, Epstein’s writing so colorfully about the subject certainly is. I felt I had a friend guiding me through the terrifying waters of my own biology.
