Customer Reviews

A Positive Life: Portraits of Women Living With HIV

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River Huston and Mary Berridge, A Positive Life: Portraits of Women Living with HIV (Running Press, 1997)

It's rare that I can't think of a way to review a book. This is one of those times.

Perhaps I'm just reading too much into the title. I keep seeing "A Positive Life" as a double-entendre, not just about living with HIV, but as some sort of resolute looking forward. And there is some of that here, to be sure, but there is also bitterness, anger, cynicism, and fear. Another reviewer said that this book "...helps us to remember that these people really are no different than the rest of us." Indeed.

The reader also goes on to say that River Huston is an amazing lady, and having published her first chapbook, I can honestly say "THAT's damn right," but Huston is, aside from a brief introductory passage, nowhere to be found here. (Rather surprising; I would have thought she'd have gone for a self-interview here, as she's the most positive person, from an outlook point of view, I've ever met, with or without HIV.) Like Hal Gold in Unit 731: Testimony or Georges Bataille in The Trial of Gilles de Rais, when the subjects start speaking, the author fades into the background and lets them tell their own stories, and keeps so far out of the spotlight that there's not even a particular editorial style to be found here; you get the idea that what you see is raw, unexpurgated transcriptions of microcassettes. I doubt it, as the pieces here are quite short, but the effect is there.

I was originally going to slag it slightly for being too short, clocking in at just under a hundred twenty pages, but the simple fact is that what's here is just about enough. There is a relentless, crushing power to these stories, both in their differences and in their similarities, to the point where the reader may find himself either numbed or on the verge of breakdown, given two or three hundred pages.

Worth your time. ***

I was brought to tears by many of the stories in this book. In addition to the power of the stories, the pictures capture the essence of the subjects and help us to remember that these people are really no different than the rest of us. River Huston is an amazing lady and I think she did an awesome job helping the reader relate to these women from all walks of life. I would definately recommend this book, it will forever change the way you view your own life!

The portraits in this book brings HIV into focus in a way I have never seen before. The stories of these women call into question the assumption that the women who get HIV are very different from you and I. Every teenage woman who reads these short biographies will better understand that she too is at risk.