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A review by ajsterkel
Beauty in the Broken Places: A Memoir of Love, Faith, and Resilience by Allison Pataki
2.0
I'm not the target audience for this book. I picked it up because I'm interested in medical nonfiction, and this one sounded fascinating.
While the author was pregnant, she decided to visit Hawaii with her husband. Shortly after their plane took off, her husband asked if his eye looked weird. Then he lost consciousness. The plane made an emergency landing, and doctors discovered that her husband had suffered a rare type of stroke. Her memoir is about the challenge of going through pregnancy and taking care of a newborn while also helping her husband recover.
The author says (several times) that she writes to help herself make sense of her life. I think that's my problem with the book. This story is for the author and not for random strangers. The chapters remind me of Facebook updates that are written to let family members know what's going on. The writing style is bland. Most of the "characters" are just names with no personality attached. The memoir is a straightforward retelling of events without much insight or analysis. The events are terrifying, but I wasn't sure what I was supposed to learn from reading about them.
For example, at the time of the stroke, the author's husband was a medical student. He comes from a family of doctors. The author's father is a former governor of New York. When her husband had the stroke, her father was campaigning to become president of the United States. She talks about her celebrity friends and the properties her family owns. She's obviously not hurting for money or support. She was able to get her husband the best medical care and spend months sitting by his bedside and helping with his rehab.
I'm glad he recovered, but her story is not reality for the majority of Americans. Since she doesn't examine the world outside of herself, I'm not sure how other people's experience with the medical system would differ from hers. What if you have a 9-5 office job and are now the sole provider for your family? What if your insurance sucks and won't pay for months of living at a rehab center?
By the end of this book, I felt like I'd crashed a family reunion for a family I'd never met. I was listening to their stories and wondering what I was doing there. I'm not the target audience for this book, which is fine. Not every book is for every reader.
While the author was pregnant, she decided to visit Hawaii with her husband. Shortly after their plane took off, her husband asked if his eye looked weird. Then he lost consciousness. The plane made an emergency landing, and doctors discovered that her husband had suffered a rare type of stroke. Her memoir is about the challenge of going through pregnancy and taking care of a newborn while also helping her husband recover.
The author says (several times) that she writes to help herself make sense of her life. I think that's my problem with the book. This story is for the author and not for random strangers. The chapters remind me of Facebook updates that are written to let family members know what's going on. The writing style is bland. Most of the "characters" are just names with no personality attached. The memoir is a straightforward retelling of events without much insight or analysis. The events are terrifying, but I wasn't sure what I was supposed to learn from reading about them.
For example, at the time of the stroke, the author's husband was a medical student. He comes from a family of doctors. The author's father is a former governor of New York. When her husband had the stroke, her father was campaigning to become president of the United States. She talks about her celebrity friends and the properties her family owns. She's obviously not hurting for money or support. She was able to get her husband the best medical care and spend months sitting by his bedside and helping with his rehab.
I'm glad he recovered, but her story is not reality for the majority of Americans. Since she doesn't examine the world outside of herself, I'm not sure how other people's experience with the medical system would differ from hers. What if you have a 9-5 office job and are now the sole provider for your family? What if your insurance sucks and won't pay for months of living at a rehab center?
By the end of this book, I felt like I'd crashed a family reunion for a family I'd never met. I was listening to their stories and wondering what I was doing there. I'm not the target audience for this book, which is fine. Not every book is for every reader.