Immortality News

By Mariann Regan

Managed care. Does it care? In this compassionate, funny, and bitingly satiric novel, the soul of our conflicted health care industry is put on display. How much would Americans pay to grant health... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0887391923
• ISBN13: 9780887391927
• Release Date: November 1999
• Publisher: Creative Arts Book Co
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 1.0" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Great Story -- Great Ethics!

A deeply engaging, provocative and humorous exploration of characters and issues relating to managed health care. Too often, the important ethical issues of managed care fall prey to the dry, theoretical expositions of academic ethics scholars. But not here! Regan tells a great story, and in so doing provides a very helpful basis for imaginative and empathetic reflection about ethical problems in our current health care system. This is one of those special books that can work well in college courses on medical ethics while also reaching a wide, popular audience.

Dealing with Immortality

From the moment I began reading Immortality News I wanted to call the author to tell her in person how terrific I thought the book was. Instead I emailed her, using the address provided in the book. One of its many attractions is the way this book invites you to enter a personal relationship with the author about the book and its themes. And those themes are Big. Immortality News raises all the great philosophical questions of life and death. What would you do if you could live forever? If you could share this power with others, whom would you choose to share it with? Regan and her characters may not have all the answers, but, she assures us, your managed care company surely does. That is the background against which Regan weaves an intricate and absorbing plot. Regan's characters are appealing and her prose is lyrical and brilliant. She captures the political and social climate of the American health care scene better than any fiction author writing today. I commend this book to anyone who cares about life, death, health care and beautiful writing.

A FRAGILE UTOPIA

There's suspense, intrigue, and a miracle or so in IMMORTALITY NEWS, a scary novel that is so well done it requires no between line reading. Government, medicine, politics, religion, myths, attitudes, stances and relationships of every stripe are polygraphed. And there's a benefit rarely found in fiction. Folks might seek a healthier lifestyle after dog-earing this one! Read it once to feast on the "page turner" appeal. Then return to marvel at the satire, wit, honesty and blunt indictments, flat-out education. The plotting is expert, outright excellent wordsmithing that also concerns itself with the act of writing. Images and lines will stick -- "She heard the dry flutter of a moth's wings, and a wedge of light soared in, pure as a knife." Moths are important: "a Moth Heaven, -- all those tiny white souls." Virginia Woolf's DEATH OF A MOTH is noted! Some pages hold up mirrors for self-evaluation. But readers should not be too harsh on themselves or despair. Characters of all ages, colors and persuasions, fully developed and good, will reach out. Many brands of wisdom are present: a Native American will guide you. Not familiar with Derrick Bell, Alice Miller, Lawrence Stone or Cornel West? (Jot them down for later!) Mark Twain is here, so relax. Treat this read as your "Ceremony of the Moment!" Man, a villain who makes Huck's pop worthy of parenting awards! His punishment is a thing to behold. You'll root for the monster's kid. "Junior the speedy ghost....I am pedaling with my fast legs over the tops of trees and it is real, I am as big as the whole sky, except that my dad is calling at me from the ground somewhere, from the bottom of a pond." Jordan of the "smushed" aluminum foil is another you'll stand to cheer. She's a resourceful street woman who had "...the right timing to collect the flower bunches that grew in two generous sweeps of state-bestowed dirt, beside the Interstate ramp..." Her goal is a G.E.D. but her bouquet sales not only save her life but land her in a fragile Utopian movement that the ghosts of More and Bellamy are buzzing about. I'll leave the "drink" that ribbons through the pages to eyes-on experience. Suffice to say that one of its manifestations will serve to remind sailors, who boot-camped when all clothes were washed by hand, of the brand the Navy recommended to keep hats as white as Mark Twain's suits.

A great read!

Witty, insightful, and deeply humane, this book is a Vonnegut-esque satiric fable that works on a lot of levels. It's about the inhumanity of HMO's that make their profits from people's medical misery, about the enormous range of human bad and good behavior, and about two gay men, one of whom has a baby by intraperitoneal implantation, treated with humor and tenderness. The plot turns around how society handles the discovery of a potion that looks like liquid Wisk, tastes vaguely fruity, and confers on those who drink it robust and permanent health. Not to give away the details, society doesn't handle it all that well, but some individuals do. I found it richly entertaining, and it provokes great book-group discussions!