Both Sides Now

by Ruth Pennebaker

Book Overview

Liza thinks she and her mother, Rebecca, are as different as a mother and daughter can be. Liza, a successful high school junior, works hard at keeping her life under control while maintaining a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805061053
• ISBN13: 9780805061055
• Release Date: June 2000
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.6"
• Age Range: 12 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 7 to 12

Customer Reviews

Quite a fine book.

Liza, at fifteen, is no typical teenager. She jogs, studies hard and gets straight A's, is very responsible, and doesn't drink or smoke. She's nothing like her mother Rebecca, who spent two years working on a novel she couldn't publish. But then everything changes when Rebecca's breast cancer, thought cured, reasserts itself. Within a month Liza flunks driver's ed because she can't concentrate, gets into huge trouble when she forgets to read a school newspaper article before publishing it, and gets drunk with a boyfriend. Her family is all torn apart with worry over Rebecca, who may not survive her cancer. All of the story is written in the first person present tense, like Ruth Pennebaker's other two novels. Most of it is from Liza's point of view, but there are some interesting vignettes narrated by Rebecca. The doctors cut off both her breasts trying to stop the cancer. Then they decided to do a stem-cell transplant, a very extreme treatment that keeps you on the brink of death for weeks. It almost kills a person, but it might just save their life. At that time Liza overhears her parents fighting. "I haven't stopped hoping," Rebecca says. "I'm just hoping for something else not." Some time later she tells her children that she's decided not to have the stem-cell transplant. It's not worth it, she says. The story ends there, leaving it up to the reader to decide whether or not Rebecca survives her cancer. At the back of the book you discover that Ruth Pennebaker is a cancer survivor too. It was a fine book, though I liked the other two better. My favorite character was Liza's best friend Rory, a "slut" who's slept with eleven guys since entering high school. You can see how Rory's slutishness is really a result of underlying insecurity, but the wholeschool condemns her. All of the characters were well-drawn. I would recommend.

A Story of Hope- I hope you'll read it!!!

The book Both Sides Now is a great book! It is definitely one of the best books I have read! The story centers on Liza, a teenage girl, and her mother, who has been diagnosed with breast cancer. This story is a story of hope and courage that should relate to us all. I liked this book because it showed how and illness effects everyone in the family. I especially like the way Liza put her life back together when it fell apart. I think that everyone should read this inspiring book. It can help you realize the difference between giving up and moving on.

From a Teen-Agers point of View

Both Sides Now, by Ruth Pennebaker is a story of a high school girl named Liza and her experiences as a sophomore in high school but moreover, how she deals with her mother's case of breast cancer. The novel is written through Liza's point of view but every now and again we get a peak into the mother's side of the story. It was nice to understand what she too was going through, but I did not enjoy these little inputs. Each entry was extremely negative and brought down the optomistic and upbeat tone of the novel. Perhaps, the reason why these entries were inserted was to do exactly that: to show the sad side of breast cancer, the reality of it. Yet still, I did not appreciate them and I think that I would have given the book five stars instead of only four, had it not been for those diary-type entries. The novel did an almost perfect job at displaying what a high schooler goes through. This was displayed in everything from dealing with friends, getting drunk for the first time and flunking out of drivers ed. I could relate to Liza as I too have gone through some of her same feelings. Because of these things, and Ruth Pennebaker's strong voice, Liza was able to come alive. The reader cheers for her when she kisses her boyfriend and cries with her when the boy in her driver's ed class laughs at her. Pennebaker has a natural way of writing and it defiantly works well with the book. I enjoyed the way you could "see" Liza thinking. She would occationally corrected herself when she spoke which is the way we really think. "Right now, I'm not even sorry I have a hangover. I'd rather think about how much my head hurts--I'd rather think about anything on earth--than what's going on in my life...I've never understood it before--but maybe that's it. Anything's better than hurting this much. Anything." (p. 195) I am glad that I read this book because it helped me better understand what a cancer patient goes through. We must read things like this to better appreciate life and to value what we have so we do not take it for granted.

An engrossing life and death story.

Outgoing Liza finds her entire family changed by her mother's battle with breast cancer; particularly when more aggressive treatment is called for, and her mother appears to give up. Always in denial about the seriousness of her situation, Liza soon finds she must face the inevitable question of how her mother's remaining years will be lived in this engrossing life and death story with a new perspective on cancer's effects on the family.

bittersweet take on girl dealing with cancer

This is an emotional, highly charged work with deep insights into the minds of a responsible teen dealing with her mother's cancer. The book is told mostly through Lisa's point of view, a sweet-tempered, responsible young woman who knows where she is going in life. Her world is rocked apart by the discovery that her mother has breast cancer. Lisa'a normally straightlaced life spirals out of control...she begins flunking classes, alienating her life and gets dunk for the first time. But oddly all these events end up giving the normally practical gril an understanding of what her mother is going through....the uncontrolabilty of disease and it's aftermath.Lisa is complex character who is easy to relate to - and her eventual comprhension of her mother's illness is a journey worth taking. I would reccomend this novel for anyone dealing with cancer in the family....especially young adults.