Customer Reviews

Final Negotiations: A Story of Love, and Chronic Illness (Health Society And Policy)

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This book is so insightful and a wonderful description of what it is like to be primary caretaker for one you love. The text is wonderfully written and moves you deeply into the lives of the characters. Ellis does not shy away from honesty, and in doing so helps us all better face the realities of caring for the terminally ill. On the other hand, Ellis still manages to leave us with hope.

Ellis' autoethnographic novel graphically depicted details about the relationship she had with Gene who was her professor, partner and who later became her husband. As a scholar Ellis' Final Negotiations offered poignant thoughts, which are often ignored in academia. Ellis' experiences regarding her open relationship with Gene, his deteriorating health and her own professional growth, as a woman and scholar in her field were raw, authentic and made you appreciate healthy relationships, supportive colleagues and the ability to express yourself despite what critics have to say. Ellis' willingness to allow her readers to study how she analyzed her own subjectivity made me consider some of my inner thoughts. I recommend this book to anyone interested in finding hope and balance in all life bring us.

"Final Negotiations," for all its flaws, should help a lot of people. These are the people suffering from insomnia.

Think of the book as a sandwich. Two wafer-thin slices of sociology in the introduction and conclusion, holding between them a big fat slice of baloney.

The separation of evocative prose and sociology is the book's main flaw. In addition, the long narrative of illness is absolutely dull and tedious to read. It reads like.... fieldnotes. Like the fieldnotes of a goody two-shoes master's student who has discovered Autoethnography and is struggling to write one. Ellis is the author of good methodological treatises, but she can preach better than she can practice. "The Ethnographic I" is an excellent textbook, but "Final Negotations" is as scintillating as mucus.

I think more sex would have made the book halfway passable.