Reviews and Comments

I'm getting very tired of Lovecraftian horror, but this was a great look, weaving in history from the 1920s, at how the hatred of real people can turn them into literal monsters. Rounded up to 5 stars.

A book at jumps oddly back and forth through time and between 1) the author's overly sentimental look at her life with a genetic heart disorder and her struggle to receive adequate health care in the United States and 2) a limited investigation, based largely on one three-week trip to Madagascar, on the social and environmental effects of mining the minerals needed for pacemakers, defibrillators, and the like. Both narratives were repetitive and filled with extremely trite language, but ultimately I found the implications of the mining practices—something I was not familiar with—interesting enough to round this up to 3 stars.