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Take Off Your Party Dress: When Life's Too Busy for Breast Cancer |  | Author: Dina Rabinovitch
Publisher: Pocket Books
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £0.01
as of 25/11/2009 11:47 GMT details
You Save: £7.98 (100%)
New (22) Used (42) from £0.01
Seller: eastanglianbookshop
Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 243353
Media: Paperback
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.9
ISBN: 1416527885
EAN: 9781416527886
ASIN: 1416527885
Publication Date: March 19, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
Great Read, Great Cause March 11, 2007
bigdaddy (London)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
I heard Rabinovitch's publisher wanted to call this Don't Take Off Your Party Dress, like life with breast cancer is one big celebration. Rubbish. They're wrong, but she's right. It's a serious subject, it involves the whole family, it's terribly sad and sometimes happy, and life goes on regardless. The author is a journalist and the writing is totally compelling, the medical stuff is informative, and you don't have to have breast cancer to read it. Though if there's anyone out there who doesn't know someone with the disease, I'd be shocked. All the money's going to cancer research, which is another reason to buy the book and read it. This moving memoir is long overdue.
"Observer" paperback of the week March 18, 2007
A. Julius (London, UK)
16 out of 19 found this review helpful
Vanessa Thorpe, Sunday March 18, 2007.
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br /As the late mother of a friend sat grim-faced on a London tube train, a strange man called to her with the cliched line: 'Cheer up love, it might never happen.' She replied: 'I am on my way to get chemotherapy and then to update my will, so you could say it has already happened.'
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br /Her feisty retort has lived on since her death. The admirable Dina Rabinovitch, whose columns charting her life with breast cancer will be familiar to Guardian readers, is similarly bracing.
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br /Too often even the most pragmatic, rational people talk of combating this disease as if it is a moral as well as physical struggle. And when it comes to breast cancer, all the new theories and pop psychology are frequently just another way of making women self-critical about their behaviour. If only they could just focus on positive thinking or take control of their medication ...
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br /Rabinovitch's book is a robust response to this rubbish. With a great sense of humour, she dispenses with the ill-informed dogma and manages to remain compassionate about many of the things that get sufferers through the night. When she is unexpectedly advised by her oncologist to reconsider her imminent mastectomy, Rabinovitch is typically wry about the new suggestion that she should steer her own path to recovery.
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br /'The crux seems to be that being involved in one's own medical decision-taking makes the patient feel more positive about the treatment. And "positive" is the holiest cancer mantra of them all. [Although, not, let it be said, positive in the sense of saying yes; because "pleasers" you know are so susceptible to cancer, they qualify as tumour magnets.]'
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br /Her book is equally sardonic about the process of dealing with her newspaper bosses and her need for contact with the outside world. But it is Rabinovitch's talent for grounding these writings in the practical issues of her condition, such as how to keep yourself presentable and how to organise life around treatment, that makes clear she is aiming to aid fellow sufferers as well as to communicate her personal 'take' on the disease. Books, she says, are powerful: 'It is the books that first make me feel fear - a pointless emotion in these circumstances. Immune to doctors' grave looks, I turn out to be porous to print.'
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Take Of f Your Party Dress March 20, 2007
Ann Robinson (uk)
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
I read this book in one go but I'll be revisiting it in the future. The book is surprisingly easy to read. The daily rhythm of Dina's busy life gives it momentum and energy. The book meshes together the glamour of book launches, ordinary family and domestic events and the grind of hospital appointments. The unbearable sadness of living with serious illness lies beneath the surface. It is the author's lightness of touch that makes the this such a compulsive read. And the fact that all proceeds from the book are going to a charity to provide independent research into cancer, makes me want to recommend it even more.
Informative and very moving March 30, 2007
Damocles (London, UK)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I have had the pleasure of meeting Dina Rabinovitch in a professional capacity and all I can say is - thank God someone decided to publish this book after it was turned down by many other short-sighted publishing companies. This is not just a book for people suffering from cancer, it is a book for everyone. It is a fascinating, moving, sad and sometimes shockingly honest account fo what happens when a mother of eight children - from two marriages - finds out she has breast cancer. There is no deliberate tear jerking here, just honesty about the whole complicated process of diagnosis, masectomy, drug trials, intravenous herception etc....It is obvious that the author is intelligent and motivated (which she is in real life) and I recommend this book to everyone....
truly excellent book April 5, 2007
T. Flessas
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
I bought this book because I enjoyed Dina Rabinovitch's articles in the Guardian and wanted to read more by her. Her writing is certain and careful and finely considered, and also so immediate and personal that it was only after I finished the book that I realized how much she must have left out, i.e., how finely-crafted this narrative is. While I was reading it, I felt that I was in the center of her life and experiences with her, and I felt privileged to be there even when that was a frightening and painful place to be. But afterwards, thinking of friends of mine living with cancer, I was left with the realization of all she didn't write, her fair-mindedness, the choices she must have made about what to share and what to keep to herself. It's confessional in the way that all fantastic writing is confessional, and it is impersonal in that way as well. Although it is billed (?) as a 'memoir', it is the kind of book that opens the door to Rabinovitch's world(s) (Hendon, family, reviewing, cancer) in a kind of beautifully-constructed gift to the reader. It's a difficult book to read at times, but I was sorry when it came to an end. I finished the book wishing that I knew her, wishing her well, and wishing that another book, on any topic at all, was on its way.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
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