The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks | Paperback

The most amazing quality of this book is not the obviously diligent research and the clear account of an appalling medical case, with all the social ramifications implicit in this particular one. It is not even the skill with which the gripping revelations are made - of how and why this dreadful disease took hold of this unfortunate woman. And the circumstances in which the immortality of the title is created. That in itself is worthy of a mystery story unravelling. But I found the most moving dimension to be the perspective of the writer herself. She patiently sat out long periods of cold-shouldering by Henrietta's family: with little encouragement, she finally won the confidence of her daughter and was thus able to give us an insight into the true family situation and its sad tragedy. Most importantly she did all of this with such absence of judgement that, in reading it, we can empathise with the husband whose syphylitic infection of his wife gave her the cancer ,and most especially with the abused and motherless son who became a murderer. A really remarkable achievement.