Amazon.com Review
"It's not easy to be a female patient," writes nurse practitioner and poet Cortney Davis. "Because most of our reproductive organs are internal, even routine examinations and procedures in the field of women's health are uncommonly invasive, reminding us of our vulnerability."
I Knew a Woman is a compelling and unusual book. Sometimes it's like a novel, with Davis unraveling the stories of four women (composites of actual patients) whom she sees at a clinic. At other times, it's Davis's own health memoir, including the invasive and inappropriately sexual exams her first doctor performed when she was a teenager, and details of her breast biopsy. We learn about women's health (Pap tests, ultrasound, and biopsies, for example) and women's bodies from the perspective of a compassionate, intuitive woman whose work is examining women all day.
Davis is a poet, able to convey details with nuance and surprise. "The practitioners work their hands so fast, they blur like running water... Baby X looks as fragile and evanescent as spun sugar," she writes of an attempt to save a premature, heroin-addicted baby. And of her own profession, she writes about what nurses do best: "touching, listening, observing, interpreting, teaching, guiding, comforting, waiting, remembering." I Knew a Woman is a fascinating book by a talented writer and a skilled, intuitive nurse. --Joan Price
From Publishers Weekly
In this compelling look at how women's bodies influence, and sometimes dramatically alter, their lives, readers become intimately acquainted not only with women's body parts, but also with several specific women Lila, Eleanor, Joanna and Ren‚e, composites of the many patients Davis has treated as a nurse practitioner in a women's health clinic in suburban Connecticut. But while the characters are fictionalized, the drama, pathos and heartache in these pages ring true. Lila, who is 15, has had 10 sexual partners and is living in a car with her boyfriend when she first comes to the clinic. Two months later, she's pregnant. Eleanor, a 49-year-old math teacher who comes in for a routine exam, finds that irregular bleeding is just the beginning of her problems. Joanna, a 32-year-old graphic artist with a loving boyfriend, experiences pain every time she has intercourse. Ren‚e, a drug addict with three children in foster care, is pregnant again. Davis, a poet (Details of Flesh) and NEA grant winner, sugarcoats neither the harsh realities of their lives nor her own responses to them. Some days she feels maternal toward Lila, other days she'd like to clobber her. She's "convinced that the cause of Joanna's pelvic pain has more to do with a bruise in her soul than with an abnormality in her body." Occasionally, Davis tells us, she holds up a mirror so a patient can see her cervix. In this book, reflecting on her patients' health and histories, Davis holds up a mirror to the whole woman, letting us see inside and out. She provides a fascinating look not only at how women's bodies work, but also at a medical professional's emotions. Readers may find themselves wishing the perceptive Davis were their own nurse practitioner. Agent, Sanford Greenberger. (On-sale date: Aug. 21) Forecast: This will appeal to all who enjoyed Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography and should sell very well, boosted by the author's three-city tour.
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