Customer Reviews

Season in Hell

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4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Although not familiar with Marilyn French I read the book because the subject of a woman fighting and surviving esophageal cancer intrigued me. Marilyn is not just any woman but an intelligent author and world traveler. She gives an excellent picture of the real world of cancer. Things like waiting forever to see the doctor, enduring the chemo aftereffects, and making decisons that can either bring life or death are treated with candor and sharp honesty. She made me understand her experience as I cried with her and cheered with her. The best part of the book was reading of the support and love she received from some of her famous friends. I did not agree with her belief system but I cherished the strength I felt in the ritual of just "being " with someone. As a women's health care nurse it made me a whole lot more sensitive to how I treat patients and families

As I read this this grim memoir of a cure almost worse than the disease I kept comparing the author's wealthy and privileged situation to that of the rest of us women who don't have millions of dollars, marvelous famous friends, apartments convenient to top New York city Cancer Centers, and medical friends who can help us find the very best specialist.

As miserable as the author's sufferings are (and they ARE miserable) they pale in comparison to what a person would go through who had the same disease but could not afford around the clock private nursing, medical consultation after medical consultation, and the occasional retreat to a pleasant summer home the author describes.

This is not in any way a slam of the book, which I thought was a very accurate and revealing portrayal of what happens to anyone who suffers a serious health crisis that puts them at the mercy of unknown doctors and huge, impersonal hospitals. Instead I thought that this book would probably be a good reason to read this book before you sign your next HMO contract since it shows you just how dangerous it would be if you got a serious disease and were prevented from accessing top specialists and having the benefit of nursing and adequate rehabilitative services.

I have personally experienced the same kind of supercilious negative treatment from doctors that French details here, as well as suffering from dangerous misdiagnosis, having doctors ignore painful and crippling symptoms, and being left with permanent damage from misprescribed drugs, so I knew what she was talking about. I greatly respected her for telling a story in public that most people don't want to hear.

This is not your usual disease-of-the-week tearjerker nor is it a "how I saw God through cancer" memoir. It's a brutal, step by step documentation of how the quality of life erodes as a result of serious disease that makes all of us think about what we'd want to do if it were to happen to us--which it could and very well may.

The author isn't a saint and unlike other reviewers here I found her bleak honesty about her emotions refreshing. Life does this and it is hard as hell to deal with. I'm grateful that this woman, obviously a writer to her very (damaged) bones, made the heroic effort to write down for us this record of her journey towards physical dissolution--and as a writer myself, I'm particularly impressed that she was able to produce a work this polished while dealing with the physical limitations she describes.

This book is not for the faint-hearted, as it spares the reader no amount of pain and suffering. It is beautifully and painstakingly written, and the author is not shy about condemning those in the medical profesion whom she perceives to be pompous, bored or uncaring. She has the highest praise for the nurses who cared for her in the hospital and at home. Although ostensibly about surviving metastatic esophogeal cancer, the book is also a tribute to the author's family and friends who helped her live through the harrowing after-effects of cancer treatment. While reading the book, one begins to wonder if the treatment was worth the debilitating physical changes Ms. French deals with on a daily basis, despite being free of cancer. In the final chapter, she assures us that her sickness brought her to a better place than she'd ever been before, and we are left hoping that she can remain in that place.

I was drawn to this book because my closest friend was diagnosed with esophageal cancer at age 52 in fall 1998 and was offered only palliative care initially until she appealed to be removed from her HMO. She was then treated at Georgetown but even after aggressive treatment she died in January 2000. Ms. French's book profoundly captures the essence of these devastating diseases and the roller-coaster ride for patients and their families. She ultimately proclaims a victory, not out of hubris, but instead with a new perspective on life. Outstanding!

This is a wonderful memoir and very very eye-opening. It scared me to death. I will have to definitely think twice before I choose to "fight" if the cancer is bad enough. She made me realize that some things are worse than death. I personally would not want to live with the damaged heart, kidneys, brain, bones, etc. that she has now to live with thanks to the poison put into her body to rid her of the cancer. This is one brave woman and I applaud her. I do think she had it easier because she is wealthy. Those of us common folk would probably die and not be able to fight like her anyway due to lack of funds. All in all, this is a great book and everyone should read it. It is reality and admittedly reality sucks, but that's life. Again, I applaud this author, great book !!

Marilyn French's "A Season in Hell" is a disarmingly honest account of her life/death battle with Esophageal Cancer, but just as importantly her memoir is a testimony to her honesty and unfailing conviction that life under any circumstances is worth living, if mostly in terms of what the heightened powers of the intellect can bestow on the human condition. Make no mistake about it, this intelligent woman analyzes life while in the deepest of physical and emotional pain. This is a woman one can imagine standing at the pearly gates, discussing with St. Peter what she learned on a gurney in the Emergency Room. One has to hand it to her for the courage she displayed facing the unknown and the terrible scourge of cancer. This book is a testimony to what it takes to live and think under the worst circumstances known to man. French wants us to celebrate life with all the curiosity and analytic powers we possess, even as she suffers without respite. Life is affirmed for both reader and writer by this serious, grim account of one woman's audacity in the face of death.

Told by her doctors and friends over the years that she should quit smoking, she held onto the habit until it was too late. This reveals her own stubbornness and perhaps anxiety that she would persist in the self-destructive behavior that brought her to her terminal condition. We can imagine the hubris that prompted her disregard of common sense. This is a woman whose intellect is more lofty than most, but alas perhaps it was too self-absorbed, too analytical and intellectually self-indulgent to weigh the consequences of her denial. Yet with heartfelt feeling in the face of despair and hopelessness, French depicts the power of the existential approach to human suffering. Without concern for her image or fate, she wills her vision of what her final life chapter is to be: a fight like hell to assert her right to live and express herself. Whatever obstacles the medical profession places in her way, no matter the negativity and incompetence of various practitioners, she will march unflaggingly to her own tune and on her own terms. For that we must regard her journey as heroic; she is indeed a trailblazer in the sense that Farah Fawcett was or Susan Sontag, other icons of authenticity.

That is not to say that French didn't exercise her own blatant denial in the face of her illness as well as her continued smoking habit. She admits herself that while she had always been motivated by the search for truth and secretly despised those who feared it and glossed over dark possibilities, she herself manipulated her grasp of the facts of her disease, internalizing a magical version of it so as to preserve her will to live. Although she did not mind confrontation, she simply could not accept the obvious truth of her condition without "lying to myself." She admits doing so made the ordeal more bearable and granted her some optimism in the process. Her doctors were not positive about her prognosis, but she earnestly persisted in her hope, probably enjoying the assertion of her own authority over those who had control over her. Even dying, she was a feminist to the core, insisting in the face of opposition, that she had a right to her own choices. Although she was told she had a year to live, she insisted on the fact that she had a chance, and she would pursue it. Simultaneously she resisted the indignity of measures that would prolong her life at the expense of her faculties. She would hold onto life as long as there was hope. Period.

The painful process of healing was interminable, but its joys were many as well. Her family took her to the Berkshires to rest. Friends from all over humored and supported her. Their constant attention and support provided the nourishing blanket her fear required. She doggedly continued her writing, as if that allowed her to preserve her identity intact as it had been before her treatment for a terminal illness. During her suffering, French takes some consolation from the fact that she no longer has hard feelings about her past. She observes in other terminal patients the conflicted passions of childhood and marvels that they have held onto such negativity for so long; at the same time, she harbors the same toward doctors and other seemingly uncaring professionals. Sixty-one, she felt she'd had a satisfying life. At ten she knew she wanted to be a writer; she had the ambition and discipline to achieve her goal, and did. Her satisfaction at that fulfillment speaks to the strength she was able to martial to deal with her disease. In recognizing the blessings of her life, she acknowledges her own "fierceness", "intensity" and "volatility," but she realizes those very qualities helped her to overcome her own feelings of being unloved as a child. Moreover, she takes pride in the fact that while derailed for the two decades of her life that she submitted to that sentiment, she now focuses on the fact that she grew beyond that stage and is happy with the years after that. She "craved knowledge" and sought it out even when the sky was dimmed by her own despair. Her curiosity and search for truth were the instruments by which she made her life meaningful, and she is proud of that throughout her ordeal. It is indeed her red badge of courage. She saw knowledge as a vehicle for "living on a higher plane" of good taste and aesthetics, all part of the elite life she sought and finally gained. And she admits that despite the fact that eventually she had it all: travel, excitement, a beautiful home in Manhattan, intellectually stimulating dinner parties with informed conversation, she never thought about the moral imperatives much, about the decency or lack thereof of her associates. Not caring whether she had a conventional life, she nevertheless acquired it by marrying and having children, a quirk of nature, but satisfying and fulfilling.

What was particularly interesting in French's description of her ordeal, is that she never expresses self-pity or regret. Disease is what it is, something to be endured and overcome but not a cause for others' or her own despair. While she is in constant pain, and while she is often angry at the dismissive nature of certain professionals, she does not allow herself to dwell on the pain or misery of her situation. Instead she focuses on the meaning of her plight, the turns and twists of the pathology itself, drawing from the symptoms and her own reactions some meaning in the process of physical suffering. She observes the people around her and their sorry fates as part of the grand dimension of life: That which is worth clinging to and savoring for its meaning, however that meaning is blurred by the temporary aspects of pain and limitation. For this stoicism, we have to applaud her. Her coven, her friends, her family are all part of the elaborate support system that has helped to endow her life and her suffering with transcendent meaning.

For, as French reminds us, "When we die, all we are possessed of is our experience." And in that sense we are in control of what we make of life. She does not subscribe to determinism or a monotheistic god, but she does acknowledge the significance of "coming to terms with the inexorable conditions of our lives." Yet it is the individual who chooses the route to that and who determines the quality of his own life. "Richness" in life is determined by the quality of the "experience," and "the wider and richer our interactions and connections, the richer our life." She asserts that "When we are old and look back, it is only this that matters. The rest is all props." Moreover, French acknowledges at the end that although we all cling to life, death is a "calm far deeper than any I felt in life." In fact, to French, "Death is a friend." Finally, French is grateful for her sickness that allowed her to affirm both life and death and to be grateful for the experiences she forged with tenacity borne of her belief in the existential notion that our will defines our being. Thus, "A Season in Hell" is ultimately affirming of life and death and as such is well worth reading for all seekers out there.

Marjorie Meyerle
Author Bread of Shame, a literary novel
Bread of Shame

Marilyn French is honest. Her observation of the cancer treatment establishment rings true. She hones in on the irony that in order to live, given the extremity of the treatment, she almost had to die and she remains considerably handicapped after the chemo and radiation have done their damage. Still, she is happy with the bargain that she made to keep living. She does not expect any afterlife, so it is not surprising that she is happy to be alive. She observes that most people want to continue to live at any cost. However, those costs are not entirely her own. She has to rely on her family and on the medical system. Does her life place an unfair burden on the people around her? This question will be multiplied by the millions as all of us aging baby boomers prolong our lives.

Marilyn had money, and her family and friends were all willing to help. My question may answer itself. Those more fortunate will have care and live longer and those less fortunate won't. Many of us, though, will have to be concerned about how our needs impact the lives of our children and others who care about us. I think it would deepen Marilyn's book if she had given more consideration to this question.

This is one of those stories of growth and survival from a terrible disease, but it reads like a thriller. I couldn't put it down! I really would like to thank the author for her brave, honest and not always pretty descriptions of her experiences fighting to survive cancer. I hope to use her honesty as a model for myself, in sickness and health, throughout life.

I picked up this book to read as it looked to be an interesting medical tale. I knew nothing about the author before reading it. I found it to be well-written, and I am intrigued enough that I am going to seek out more books by French, but this particular work I found to be overally self-centered. French's recovery was indeed quite remarkable, but she doesn't really put it into any kind of context---the book reads to be an endless list of all her suffering and pain. I found her to not seem to really appreciate how blessed she was to be able to afford all the help she did, and to have family that seemed endlessly devoted. She talked about all her children must have spent to be able to do all they did for her, but didn't mention reimbursing them, although she did mention having a Porsche and a NY City apartment with 5 bathrooms. I guess this book was totally honestly written, and I can appreciate that, as it honestly didn't make the writer too likable.

Bought for a friend and was told it was a good read. Book arrived in good condition and was well packaged. Recommend the seller for promptness.