Our Short History doesn’t traffic in platitudes or soft-focus farewell monologues. For that, we are all grateful. Instead, Lauren Grodstein has subtly written a cathartic and unexpectedly profound book that connects with an experience we all hope to put off as long as possible. It’s also impossible to put down ... Just as you think that Grodstein is steering her reader down a well-trodden road, she turns cliché on a dime. Her gimlet eye offers surprises throughout the book ... Our Short History delivers the emotional punch you expect it to, only it comes from an angle you didn’t anticipate. This letter from mother to son speaks to all.
...it’s a conceit that only partly works. If this book were in actuality a record of a mother and son’s short, precious time together, it would never include ruminations on campaign strategy or the writer’s innermost thoughts (think: sex and revenge) about the boy’s father ... If you can get past the gimmick, however, a tender tale unfolds ... Grodstein, with poignancy and mordant humor helps us see and sympathize with a mother’s illogical desperation ... Grodstein has a fine touch, alternately sarcastic, perceptive and wistful.
...an unabashed tear duct rooter that should come with its own box of Kleenex Ultra Soft and a plush toy from the American Cancer Society ... If the conceit of having Karen write an entire book to Jake in direct address gets clunky in places, particularly after her remission gives way to recurrence and her condition deteriorates, it is consistent with 'sick lit' as a genre and keeps the pages turning ... This primal eruption of maternal jealousy and rage is the dramatic high point of the novel — 'I am your only mother!' Karen howls in a $2,000 wig, a Wii controller clutched in her hand. The rest of Our Short History, unfortunately, is content to deliver the tamer pleasures of 'sick lit' for adults.
The novel’s creative structure feels incredibly personal, since Karen isn’t afraid to editorialize. Grodstein manages to walk the fine line between pathos and melodrama by painting Karen as a fully realized mother, sister, and friend, never allowing the cancer to consume her complex identity. Fans of Camille Pagán’s Life and Other Near-Death Experiences will love Karen’s unflinchingly honest journey.
It is a story about finding humanity on the 'other' side, whichever side that may be ...Grodstein takes on the voice of 43-year-old Karen Neulander, a Democratic political consultant who’s dying from late-stage ovarian cancer and preparing to leave her young son, Jacob, behind ... So she writes Jacob a book to document their short history. It is a loving, sincere, often grueling account that refuses sentimentality. Karen lays it all on the table ... Our Short History is most hard-hitting in its essential truth about what it means to be a dying, or even just an aging woman in the pressure cooker that is American culture, where youth and vitality are valued above all else.
Grodstein deftly explores family relationships, but the device of Karen writing a book for her son is cumbersome and artificial. The power of the book is also undermined by the sentimental circumstances and predictable ending: will Karen let Dave, who has changed and is eager to have a meaningful relationship with the son he never knew he had, be a part of her son’s future without her?
Our Short History provokes so much emotion. And Grodstein’s storytelling skills make Karen seem so real ... Grodstein’s descriptions of Karen’s treatment are textbook accurate and riveting. She captures the chilling reality of ovarian cancer ... The ending may be predictable, but it carries an important lesson about letting go. In Karen’s case, it’s not so much accepting that she’ll die, leaving Jake behind, it’s the more subtle realization that she has a mother’s duty to help 'the people you love most in the world leave you.'”
... the commitment-phobe at the center of her 2004 debut, Reproduction Is the Flaw of Love.That title also could describe Grodstein's latest, Our Short History, in which she at last turns to the topic of motherhood ... Her response to this gut-wrenching diagnosis is to write a book to her son, Jacob, to be read when he's 18. The book she writes is the one you hold in your hand, and it's a conceit that only partly works ... If you can get past the gimmick, however, a tender tale unfolds ... But Grodstein, with poignancy and mordant humor helps us see and sympathize with a mother's illogical desperation ... Grodstein has a fine touch, alternately sarcastic, perceptive and wistful.
