Customer Reviews

Cancer Is a Bitch: (Or, I'd Rather Be Having a Midlife Crisis)

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In her subtitle, Gail Konop Baker wishes that instead of dealing with breast cancer, she could be battling a mid-life crisis. Well, she manages to tackle both with extreme candor, humor, and an openness that is enough to win over any reader, even if they don't think a cancer book sounds like much fun.

It's not, but that doesn't mean Baker is morose. She worries about her future, and more so, in a way, her family's, continually picturing her husband paired up with her yoga teacher or "Laura New Hampshire," a former neighbor. It's in exploring her almost-20 year marriage and its ups and downs that Baker truly shines, especially as her illness is part of that; her husband is a radiologist, and her fear over his reaction to her having cancer, adds to her overall stress.

She writes: "I love him. I hate him. I want him. I don't. But why doesn't anyone tell you how risky it is to trust another person with the all f you, to imprint your life with their life? How frightening it is to love and let yourself be loved? That to stay with someone you have to get over and get on and be willing to redefine the marriage over and over again. And compromise. Always compromise." These thoughts recur throughout the book, but they are not neurotic worries that can be annoying in memoir or fiction, but rather the very real worries about a life suddenly in chaos.

At one point, Baker notes that all her friends are reading Nora Ephron's I Feel About My Neck, and she wishes she could feel bad about something other than her breasts. When describing the physical changes, she harkens back to her days feeding her children, and later it's her daughters who help her pick out a purple bra.

Baker is not only concerned with her own well-being. In "Cancer Snakes Its Way Through the Neighborhood," one of the most moving chapters, she looks around at her neighbors and what they struggle with. Along the way she separately confronts each of her parents over how they handled their childrearing duties, pushing each relationship forward.

This is a book about cancer, yes, but it's really a book about love and family, ambition and hope. The writing hut Baker's husband built for her is a symbol of who she yearns to be, and even though you are holding the product of her efforts in your hand, already know in advance she has succeeded, you feel for Baker's thwarted writing dreams. This is a gutsy, brave, powerful, funny and tear-inducing memoir. Baker doesn't shrug off her diagnosis, but she learns how to live with the uncertainty of it, and embrace each day, and her family and friends to the fullest. That may sound sappy, and maybe it is, but it's sappy in the best kind of way, because it's real and questioning and raw. Kudos to baker on achieving her dream(s) and giving us a peek into her marriage, her family, and her heart, along with her doctors' offices.

I just finished your book this afternoon. I couldn't put it down. My first (wildly inaccurate) impression was way off ! I was thinking.... is this going to be merely an intense screed, a wailing against horrid bad luck, an indulgent poor me diatribe against the inept medical community, a cry for help or a selfish attention-getting plea for sympathy?.....and honestly wondered where it would or could go. I kept on flipping the pages.....and the layers of humanity and vulnerability and FEAR began to build and it pulled me in, deeper and deeper until I felt as though I were personally going through your hell. But all the while, you managed to keep your midlife journey funny and poignant and courageous. I'm proud to say," I used to know Gail Baker way back when." I think having cancer gave you your life back, just like a live, grown-up REAL woman we'll call Pinocchia! Thank God you survived intact and sane. Now please, you owe the world some more tender, yet electrifying books!

Gail Konop Baker brings readers a heart-felt, gut-wrenching beautiful story in her debut book. Cancer is a Bitch is Gail's own personal story. I commend Mrs. Konop Baker on sharing her story as it takes a lot of strength and guts to turn your life into a book and not just any books but an outstanding, wonderful, incredible book. I picked up this book and started reading; before you know it I was done.

One thing that made this book really enjoyable was Gail's sense of humor through the whole situation. There was evidence of this from things like the titles of each chapter to the comments Gail made. I have only one comment to make and that is I will never look at a chicken breast the same way again. I just feel in love with Mrs. Konop Baker and her family. Gail Konop Baker is one author to be on the look-out for as she will blow you away but in a good way. I look forward to many, many more books to come from Mrs. Konop Baker.

Cancer is a Bitch. Doesn't the title just grab you and make you want to read this book?

I have to say, I really enjoyed Cancer is a Bitch. I was a little apprehensive when the author sent me a copy to review because what was I supposed to say if I didn't like it? "I'm sorry, but your experience with a deadly illness just wasn't interesting enough for a positive review on my blog." Thankfully, Gail Konop Baker didn't put me in that position in the slightest.

Most reviews you will read of this book will probably tell you that the best quality of this book is its humor. And yes, the humor is wonderfully sarcastic and heartbreaking at the same time. But I would argue that its best aspect is its sheer humanity. Gail is just a regular person with a horrible diagnosis. She's at a place in her life where she is questioning everything: her life, her body, her husband, her choices. The full title of this book is Cancer Is a Bitch: (Or, I'd Rather Be Having a Midlife Crisis). But Baker is having a midlife crisis - unfortunately, she just has to include cancer along with everything else. She is completely relatable and loveable; she isn't that person who accepts her diagnosis graciously with a serene smile on her face. She does what any of the rest of us would do: she freaks out.

I have to go back to the humor in the book. I mentioned it earlier, but it is such an integral component of the book that I want to elaborate on it. I avoid books about cancer and disease a lot of the time for the simple reason that they depress me. A lot of times, I end up empathizing way too much with a character and their story haunts me for months. If any of you are anxious about that, don't be. Cancer is a Bitch is many things, but it isn't depressing. It's funny, witty, sarcastic and will have you laughing out loud.

Read this book. That's all I really have left to say. Gail Konop Baker is one of the 2008 Debutantes (if you haven't checked out The Debutante Ball, drop what you're doing and go there now). I see that as a positive and a negative for an author: it guarantees publicity and an audience, but at the same time, there is a pressure to live up to the works of the other authors, especially for Baker, whose book is coming out later in 2008. But it's not a problem for Cancer is a Bitch. It's wonderfully written, smart, funny, and a great read. Enough said. Go read it!

I enjoyed the sarcasm and humor in the beginning of the book. So many books about cancer are too sentimental. I know that sounds odd, but as a cancer patient, you kind of get tired of it and want something to laugh about while being inspiring at the same time.

I was excited when I first started reading it, but I couldn't really relate to the author as the book progressed. My treatment is on-going, including a long hospital stay and some scary complications. I'm not trying to trivialize the author's experience at all, but I'm just saying that I personally couldn't relate that much. I'm also 22, so maybe that was another reason why I couldn't relate.

Having just gone through radiation and chemotherapy for cervical cancer myself, I was very interested to read this author's take on how having cancer affected her life in so many ways.

I think everyone depending upon their stage in life (mine was mid-50's, 4 grown children and 2 teens at home, self-employed, married 30 years), has different reactions both emotionally and physically as well as spiritually. However, as Gail Konop Baker writes, those reactions and your stage in life determine a lot about how you approach the results, surgery, treatment and follow-up visits.

Ms. Baker's reactions of wondering about how her kids would get on without her, what her husband might do or should have done and whether her own personal life is as best she could make it are pretty common reactions. Her treatment of them is touching, sad, funny and passionate! She is also very frank about her worries on her appearance, the aftermath and her husband's and children's responses to her illness.

A very entertaining and informative read!

I started this book intending only to read for a few moments before dashing away to the next thing in my datebook and was immediately pulled in, instead. By page twenty-one, I'd already cried three times, in the way that only the perfect mix of humor, author self-awareness and heartbreak can bring; not because I was sad for the author, but because the story is so beautifully written and so identifiable from any place in life, so real, so balanced and so thought-provoking. I found myself thinking, "You know, that's how I would react, too; that's what I think, too. I didn't realize I thought that until right now, but I do, so very much."

Somehow, Gail manages to take this incredibly trying personal story and turn it into a deep, funny, thoughtful examination of, essentially, life itself. Bravo!

The minute I started reading Cancer Is A Bitch, I could NOT put it down. Honestly, irreverently, hysterically and exquisitely, Gail hurled me into what she endured and continues to face as a cancer survivor. But, more than that- the frenetic chaos, endless questions, overwhelming fear and love, so much love for her family, her life and her relationship with herself, it was so poetically human, so perfectly written, how could I not relate? With every page I devoured, the more invested in Gail's life, in her family, her hopes, her dreams, her friends, her choices, her fears, her consequences, and her everything, I became. I felt so deeply connected to her. I fell in love with her, her bravery, the complexity of her mind, how brutally-unrelentingly-honest she is and her humor.

Everyone will take something different from Cancer Is A Bitch, of course. What I took from it, why it had such a profound impact on me and why I had to read it twice was because (again, for me) it was about my relationship with myself and how sidelined and consumed by others that can become. How quickly I have, at times dismissed the importance of it or realized that it even was important.

Cancer Is A Bitch is a MUST READ.

At the age of 45, Gail Konop Baker is a mother of three with a radiologist as a husband. She practiced yoga, ran, ate organic food, and rarely became sick. Gail also hoped to start her writing career with her novel about a woman with breast cancer. Then, strangely enough, not long before Valentine's Day, Gail is diagnosed with breast cancer. This begins her struggle with marriage, children, with her oldest going to college soon, family, and of course, the cancer itself-all in a heartfelt and humorous way.

Baker's humorous tone made the novel a quick read. I also liked that, for a book that deals cancer, the novel was not sad or too self-pitying. The novel is titled as Cancer is a Bitch: Or I'd Rather be Having a Midlife Crisis, but through the novel, Baker has a midlife crisis, so the novel is not just about cancer, which was also nice. I enjoyed reading about her family and experiences. Because her husband was a doctor, Baker knew most of her doctors on a more personal level, which, I'm sure you can imagine, can be odd, especially when you're lifting up your shirt at your doctor's appointment.

The best part about this novel is that I would want to read it even if Baker did not have cancer or was going through a midlife crisis. That's how powerful of a narrator she is. She can make going to the grocery store seem interesting.