Customer Reviews

Live a Little

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Who'd a thunk one woman's epic battle to keep up the appearance of having cancer could be so hilarious, so bizarre, yet still pull at the heartstrings. There is plenty of fodder here for Green's satiric verve: the pieties of therapeutic talk shows, handsome but ineffectual doctors, creepy alternative medicine practicioners, know-it-all teenagers, our society's obsession with achievement, our received ideas on family life, and more, all get skewered mercilessly. At the same time, like in her two previous novels, Kim Green exudes warmth for her protagonist and many of her flawed characters. Raquel Rose lets it all hang out and does many terrible things, but you can see how easy it can be, under the right circumstances, one small weakness following another, to find yourself in her predicament.

I loved this book! She created such intriguing and endearing characters. Her writing style is so entertaining and really makes me giggle. I look forward to her next one!!

A book about a woman who fakes having cancer - who knew it would be so funny? Not to mention touching and relatable. Through Raquel Rose, Kim Green voices with brutal honesty the challenges that many women struggle with, but never speak of: dissatisfaction with marriage, the disappointment of sacrificed dreams, frustrations with children, rivalry with other women, etc. Sounds heavy, I know, but somehow it is not. The story pulls you in and you can't wait to see how it all plays out.

Raquel Rose is a harried housewife with two teenagers who take her for granted and a rather distant husband. When she receives the news that she has breast cancer, her family does an about face. Her kids start helping out with the housework, are thoughtful and her husband is being attentive. Raquel appears on her sister's successful television show ' Living with Lauren' and raises a lot of money for breast cancer.

The trouble is that at her next doctor's appointment, she gets the news that her test results were mixed up with another Raquel and she does not have cancer.

Stunned, Raquel goes home and tells her family the good news. Or tries to - they don't believe her, they're sure she's just putting on a brave face. In the end she decides to go with the lie. After all, she raised $250,000 so far...and this would be a chance to turn around her life and reinvent herself.....and her family is being so good to her......and ........

Well, you can see there might be a problem with this. Does she get caught out? I won't give away anymore, but you are in for a comical read. Green's descriptions of people, places and situations are laugh out loud funny. Her fantasies of Viggo Mortensen, her overachieving sister, her best friend and the local society ladies are hilarious. Once in a while it seems to escape and go a wee bit over the top.

At first I was a bit wary of the premise - pretending to have cancer? The women battling cancer in the book are depicted as strong and use humour as one of the weapons in their fight. And although this deception is what gets Raquel into her predicament it's as much a story of family and finding love.

There are some mild sex scenes that some readers may either enjoy or not. All in all a good chick lit read.

I just read in the November 2008 issue of Glamour magazine an article titled, "She Said She Had Breast Cancer--But She Lied," by Erin Zammett Ruddy, and it brought to mind this book.

For the most part, I enjoyed Kim Green's novel. Sometimes the author demanded a little more suspension of disbelief than I was comfortable with, especially in the end where everyone is shown having unconditional love for everyone in spite of their mistakes, big and small. In Ruddy's article, the "pretend" cancer patient wasn't forgiven as easily by everyone in the end. And she had a lot of explaining to do.

I thought, as a reader, that Green's glib ending oversimplified the effects of deceit, betrayal, grief, and pain that the characters experienced. Granted, this is a "light" novel, not a serious read. Even so, it didn't resonate with me.

I've struggled with the tough questions and I've come up empty handed plenty of times, but even a "light" read can have some depth to it. I don't know many people who can stop talking about their spouse's affair or gloss over it because of their affection for one another. But maybe I'm blind and everyone is more tolerant than I think.

If you are part of the "I can forgive anything" crowd, this book is for you.

When the main character in this book Raquel/Rachel Rose is diagnosed with cancer, her family rallies around her, and change their ways and become supportive and loving. A tiny problem then surfaces - she was misdiagnosed and is in fact, very healthy. But Raquel likes the way she is treated and through her sisters talk show, becomes a public figure in her own right, all the time, maintaining the charade that she is actually suffering with cancer.

The lies in her life snowball and her deception reaches far and wide amongst her community - some of what happens is amusing, other parts just don't seem to work in the story as well (eg. her affair with a younger man, did not seem to suit the behaviour of a mother with cancer).

Without spoiling the ending, there seems to be a generous amount of goodwill amongst many who were deceived and consequences for Raquel's behaviour not believable.

The book is meant to be taken as a bit of fun, not serious literature and I think its important to understand this when reading it - because the topic of cancer is serious, and the author is not trying to make light of this illness, just portraying one woman's make believe world.....

Don't read this review until after you've read the book...I will wait. I read the reviews before I read the book and then I couldn't decide if I liked it or not. I spent the first 5 chapters trying to decide if I liked the book and the last 26 waiting for it to end. The story or should I say the Premise sucked me in. Raquel Rose; nee Rachael Schultz is (mis)diagnosised with breast cancer. Her whole life changes and she decides she likes the new way everyone is treating her so she doesn't tell them about her (mis)diagnosis. There is more family drama in this book then on an episode of Jerry Springer and Maury (combined). She can't fix her life so she tries to fix everyone else's. The funniest part happened on starting on page 333 and was over quickly! I don't know who is dumber me for reading the book or her family for not figuring out that she was faking.

Live a Little is the kind of book Jennifer Weiner could write with a little more life experience and development as a writer. It's funny, grounded in Jewish family life, and has a well-developed serious side.

Raquel (nee Rachel) is a housewife whose art career was swept aside by family life and raising two kids in the perfect suburban environment. The kids want for nothing: private schools (which the family can't afford) and a McMansion community to provide them with safe surroundings and the right friends. Her husband Phil is a teacher who withdraws into TV and sports when he's home. When Raquel is diagnosed with an aggressive type of breast cancer, her family rallies round. Raquel learns people are much nicer to you when they think you're going to die. Raquel's appearance on her sister's daytime talk show brings out a confident, blunt, and humorous side of Raquel that the audience goes wild for, and she raises over $250K to support breast cancer families. When she learns that a clerical error in the hospital gave her another Raquel Rose's bad news, she has a moral dilemma. Think of all the people she can help as a spokesperson for breast cancer! Think of the huge fraud she'll commit as well! She marshals her strength to tell her family, who think she's delirious and sweep her off to bed.

Live a Little is laugh out loud funny at many points and is a great treatment of the challenges faced by a forty-something woman. "Am I still attractive?", "Is this what marriage is after twenty years?", "Will my kids grow up to be rude parasites or is this just a phase?" The scope of Live a Little is ambitious and far more than a suburban romance. The anger directed at Raquel when her deceit is exposed is realistic and the reader isn't sure that any of her relationships will survive.

The character of Phil, her husband is particularly well drawn. We never see his point of view, which means he develops entirely through Raquel's observations and interactions. By the end of the book, he's as completely three-dimensional as any character written by a popular contemporary woman writer in a long time.

You have to be a little insane to survive being a wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend and still find a way to have something left for yourself. This is the truth most women won't admit to, and that Kim Green has an uncanny ability to voice. There were moments while reading this book I found myself physically squirming, so close were Raquel's experiences to my own in the these roles.