Both Sides Now [Mass Market Paperback]

Ruth Pennebaker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 9, 2002

Liza thinks she and her mother, Rebecca, are as different as a mother and daughter can be. Liza, a successful high school junior, works hard at keeping her life under control while maintaining a positive outlook.

Rebecca, who gave up writing after her book was rejected, recently completed grueling treatment for breast cancer. When tests reveal that more painful treatments are needed, it seems to Liza that Rebecca has given up.

As the control of Liza’s once predictable life unravels, she sees her mother’s courage and strength in a whole new light. Perhaps they can share the pain of the unknown together.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Fifteen-year-old Liza is the antithesis of the stereotypical teenager. Buttoned-down and straight-laced, Liza thinks carefully before she speaks, jogs regularly, and doesn't waste her valuable time on tantrums or tears. "If you don't plan, you'll get taken by surprise, and I don't want that to happen to me. I want to plan for everything so that I can have a good, successful life." But the one thing that Liza could never have planned on was her mother Rebecca getting breast cancer. With her mom's diagnosis, Liza is abruptly launched into a world without rules or meaning. Her characteristic sense of responsibility shot, Liza flunks driver's ed, forgets to fact check an important school newspaper article, and gets drunk for the first time. Suddenly, she begins to understand how her mother must feel, having to take life as it comes, and not being able to control every outcome. "Maybe I never understood anything.... Everything I knew--about Mom and Dad, about myself... has been wrong. It makes me feel stupid for the first time in my life. I'm not as smart as I thought I was. That's clear."

Young-adult author Ruth Pennebaker has penned her best book to date. Writing in a way that is wholly accessible to teens, her characterization of Liza is complex and solid. Though this is mainly Liza's story, a smattering of paragraphs are written in Rebecca's voice, giving the novel an added bittersweet quality--especially when the reader discovers that Pennebaker herself is a cancer survivor. Both Sides Now is a commendable addition to a small group of titles recently published about mothers, daughters, and cancer that includes Joan Abelove's Saying It Out Loud and Karin Cook's What Girls Learn. (Ages 12 to 18) --Jennifer Hubert

From Publishers Weekly

Pennebaker's (Don't Think Twice) bittersweet novel about a 15-year-old's attempt to cope with her mother's breast cancer combines convincing characters and near-perfect pacing. When her mother's follow-up exam reveals that her cancer has returned, Liza follows the example of her positive-thinking father who tells Liza and her younger sister, Jane, that everything will be fine and that they must all be strong. Readers will quickly see what Liza, the narrator, cannotAthat she uses what she calls her optimism to hide her fears and feelings, even from herself. But Liza's behavior shows the effects of the strain. She flunks driver's training and, worse, neglects to edit a controversial article for the school paper (which results in the resignation of her favorite teacher). Pennebaker skillfully builds the tensions in her plot, so that readers can practically pinpoint the moment that Liza will have her meltdown. From this moment of crisis Liza begins to learn to express her emotions. She begins to appreciate her mother's quiet strength, realizing that her mother is not, after all, weak or overly sensitive or high-strung. Liza's mother periodically weighs in with short narratives, chronicling her own search for a voice and her gradual acceptance of her disease. Through these passages, readers hear another perspective on the characters and realize how truly complex they are. Moving and realistic, this taut novel trades a happy ending for one both honest and empowering. Ages 12-up. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Laurel Leaf (July 9, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440229332
• ISBN-13: 978-0440229339
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,155,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKTHROUGH is Ruth Pennebaker's first adult novel. She's also written three highly acclaimed young-adult novels, DON'T THINK TWICE, CONDITIONS OF LOVE, and BOTH SIDES NOW, as well as essays and articles for The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, Texas Observer, Parents, Redbook, McCall's, Cooking Light and other nationwide publications. She is a commentator for KUT, Austin's public radio station, and the author of A TEXAS FAMILY TIME CAPSULE, a collection of her favorite columns.

Ruth lives in Austin, with her mad-scientist husband, the scattered memorabilia of their adult daughter and son, and a neutered cat named Lefty. Her hobbies are reading, yoga, social criticism, and free-form worrying. A card-carrying member of the Chickasaw Nation, Ruth was born in Ponca City, Oklahoma, close to a refinery. She holds a bachelor's degree in comparative literature from Eckerd College and, for reasons that now elude her, a J.D. with honors from the University of Texas School of Law.

Ruth also blogs at www.geezersisters.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An engrossing life and death story., September 19, 2000

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Both Sides Now (Hardcover)

Outgoing Liza finds her entire family changed by her mother's battle with breast cancer; particularly when more aggressive treatment is called for, and her mother appears to give up. Always in denial about the seriousness of her situation, Liza soon finds she must face the inevitable question of how her mother's remaining years will be lived in this engrossing life and death story with a new perspective on cancer's effects on the family.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars bittersweet take on girl dealing with cancer, June 6, 2000

By 

Xeneri - See all my reviews

This review is from: Both Sides Now (Hardcover)

This is an emotional, highly charged work with deep insights into the minds of a responsible teen dealing with her mother's cancer. The book is told mostly through Lisa's point of view, a sweet-tempered, responsible young woman who knows where she is going in life. Her world is rocked apart by the discovery that her mother has breast cancer. Lisa'a normally straightlaced life spirals out of control...she begins flunking classes, alienating her life and gets dunk for the first time. But oddly all these events end up giving the normally practical gril an understanding of what her mother is going through....the uncontrolabilty of disease and it's aftermath.

Lisa is complex character who is easy to relate to - and her eventual comprhension of her mother's illness is a journey worth taking. I would reccomend this novel for anyone dealing with cancer in the family....especially young adults.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars From a Teen-Agers point of View, January 13, 2001

By 

Sarah Weinberger (Redwood High, Ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Both Sides Now (Hardcover)

Both Sides Now, by Ruth Pennebaker is a story of a high school girl named Liza and her experiences as a sophomore in high school but moreover, how she deals with her mother's case of breast cancer. The novel is written through Liza's point of view but every now and again we get a peak into the mother's side of the story. It was nice to understand what she too was going through, but I did not enjoy these little inputs. Each entry was extremely negative and brought down the optomistic and upbeat tone of the novel. Perhaps, the reason why these entries were inserted was to do exactly that: to show the sad side of breast cancer, the reality of it. Yet still, I did not appreciate them and I think that I would have given the book five stars instead of only four, had it not been for those diary-type entries. The novel did an almost perfect job at displaying what a high schooler goes through. This was displayed in everything from dealing with friends, getting drunk for the first time and flunking out of drivers ed. I could relate to Liza as I too have gone through some of her same feelings. Because of these things, and Ruth Pennebaker's strong voice, Liza was able to come alive. The reader cheers for her when she kisses her boyfriend and cries with her when the boy in her driver's ed class laughs at her. Pennebaker has a natural way of writing and it defiantly works well with the book. I enjoyed the way you could "see" Liza thinking. She would occationally corrected herself when she spoke which is the way we really think. "Right now, I'm not even sorry I have a hangover. I'd rather think about how much my head hurts--I'd rather think about anything on earth--than what's going on in my life...I've never understood it before--but maybe that's it. Anything's better than hurting this much. Anything." (p. 195) I am glad that I read this book because it helped me better understand what a cancer patient goes through. We must read things like this to better appreciate life and to value what we have so we do not take it for granted.