Merle

This is an interesting, if light, work of nonfiction. Henrietta Lacks was a poor black woman who went to the charity ward of Johns Hopkins in 1951 with cervical cancer. Cells were taken from her body without her knowledge, and unlike other cells collected up to that point, they kept reproducing.... endlessly. Mrs. Lacks died a few months afterwards, but her cells became standard lab material over the world, used in the development of everything from the polio vaccine to the atomic bomb. Her family found out two decades later, and didn’t see a dime of the profits.

I enjoyed this book, reading almost all of it in one day. Skloot is a skilled storyteller, with an accessible, engaging journalistic style. The early section dealing with Henrietta Lacks’s life is probably the best. It's a kind of story that isn't usually told, and Skloot does a good job of relating the information she was able to gather, without speculating on the parts we can't know. A few chapters discuss the science, though mostly on a surface level; readers with little interest or background in science should not be scared away, as these chapters are brief and accessible. The section dealing with the history of medical experimentation on unconsenting African-Americans is especially memorable.

However, a large portion of the book, particularly in the second half, deals with the author’s journey in researching the book and gaining the trust of the Lacks family, and focuses on her friendship with Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah. This story is well-told, and I do think the Lacks family needed to be part of this book; their discovery of their mother’s cells had an enormous impact on their lives, and the irony of their inability to afford health care would be impossible to miss even if the book didn’t point it out. But devoting so much of the book to the author’s researching it does make it seem, in the final analysis, rather light. Compared to most nonfiction, it’s less informative and a quicker read; this accessibility no doubt contributed to its bestseller status, but much as I enjoyed it, I didn't learn nearly as much as I'd expected. At least the Lacks family is finally benefiting from their ordeal.