2 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
Pink Isn't the Only Cancer by Bob N. Roberts is a memoir of Bob's second experience with cancer. Now, more than forty years after his first fight with cancer, Bob is at war with prostate cancer.
It was refreshing that Bob didn't focus on the negatives. In fact, Bob is one of the most positive authors I've ever seen! Bob writes about his interactions and relationships with the medical staff and the insights he picked up from his experiences. Then he goes into some very blunt, honest, and funny depth about his embarrassing, invasive battle. The book covers the entirety of his experience, from the initial tests and diagnosis to post-treatment wrap-up chapters. Do you want to know how awful it is to have a full bladder for a bunch of tests? Are you curious about why Bob is so happy that so many of his doctors and nurses have small hands? Are you worried about some of the more negative side effects of radiating such a sensitive, private area? Trust me, you'll find out because Bob doesn't hold back at all!
While Bob is very frank in Pink Isn't the Only Cancer, he's a little too casual. The book is assembled from notes he wrote as he was going through his experiences, and they don't seem like they were improved on since then. I easily found a dozen errors a quarter of the way through the book. Worse yet, there were countless instances of missing, assumed words, such as "took just a minute" instead of "it took just a minute." There were also a couple of chapters that essentially repeated the chapters before them with different information. While I understand why these chapters were included, I would've preferred if Bob merged each of these pairs into chapters that included all the information without repeating events.
I really enjoyed Bob's focus on how his medical staff treated him as a person, not just a faceless patient. Almost every person who interacts with him is friendly, outgoing, and interacts with him on a personal level. Bob has some magnificent quotes throughout the book about it, such as "I am a person after all, and not Cancer."
Between Bob's terrific quotes and humor, this book had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, the lack of editing and polish really hurt the book. It had other issues too: it felt too long, information was repeated too frequently, and the flow between chapters could've been better. I really wanted to be able to give this book 3 or even 4 stars, but there are too many negatives. I'd give it 2.5 if I could, but since that's also impossible, my rating of Pink Isn't the Only Cancer is 2 out of 4 stars. Bob still succeeded in his goal of writing a book to prepare people who are dealing with prostate cancer. It's an excellent book for anyone who has prostate cancer as well as adults who have a close friend, family member, or significant other who was diagnosed with it. I'd also recommend it to people who enjoy forthright memoirs with some terrific humor.
******
Pink isn't the only Cancer
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon