Maybe it is me, not the book.  But I found that Jon Reiner’s memoir of his intestinal disease, during which he could not eat for 3 months, was tiresome and in need of some drastic editing.  I’d have preferred just to read his 2009 article of the same name in Esquire magazine.  The book has so many digressions into the past, his family history, past Thanksgiving meals, his childhood experiences of Crohn’s Disease, his family troubles, and of course, lots of details about his ongoing medical problems.  Reiner’s account of his illness does give a good account of what it is like to live through a long illness where it is not clear if he will survive, and the stresses it places on a marriage.  Needless to say, his wife had a hard time while looking after their two young sons.  We also get some sense of his own desperation and worry about the future, as well as his ways of surviving the long hospital stay, the frustrations of different doctors disagreeing with each other and criticizing the decisions of previous doctors, and his worry about how his illness is affecting his sons.  Most readers seem to enjoy the book, and if you can make it through to the end, you will definitely have a good sense of the everyday life problems as well as the major medical issues that go along with such a serious case of Crohn’s.  The unabridged audiobook is read by Dan John Miller, who is good as Reiner, but whose voice as Reiner’s children or wife is rather babyish and off-putting. 

Links:

• Author website
• Audiobook website

© 2012 Christian Perring        

Christian Perring, Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York