I worried picking this up that it might be a bit maudlin, with all sorts of uplifting, heartwarming messages from cancer survivors for other cancer victims or their families. This was not the case. The stories of five women dealing with cancer in their own way are angry, painful, and brutally honest. The families aren't always brought closer together by cancer; in fact, some of them begin to fray from the strain. None of them end on the note of being glad to have cancer, because it brought them something important. These are people who are honest - they didn't want to get cancer, they didn't want their lives turned upside down, they didn't want to die. I worried that the lack of punctuation might make it difficult to read, but the story flows in a way that is linear enough and lucid enough that simply having an extra space instead of a period didn't distract as much from the reading as it might. ( )