Life in the Balance: My Journey with Breast Cancer
Dr. Marla Shapiro; $29.95 cloth 0-00-200814-9, 300 pp., 5½ x 8½, HarperCollins Canada, Sept. Reviewed from advance reading copy
There are a few notables – sports personalities, actors, politicians, and the like – who can proudly proclaim to have penned their memoirs and autobiographies without the help of a ghostwriter. It may be that Dr. Marla Shapiro can make the same claim for her breast cancer memoir, but on the evidence, it would have been wise to call in the cavalry for this one.

A well-known media doctor (she appears on CTV News, hosts Balance: Television for Living Well, and writes a Globe and Mail health column), Shapiro had always been super-healthy. Add in a rock-solid marriage, three lovely kids, and a successful family practice, and she was laughing – until the ironically apt date of Friday, August 13, 2004. A routine mammogram on that day revealed what would turn out to be an extremely invasive and aggressive type of breast cancer: ductal carcinoma.

The book follows Shapiro over the next year or so as she juggles the many options available, her medical training almost a curse as she tries to play along as patient. She eventually chooses chemo and a double mastectomy, a combo that forces the uber-busy and self-reliant career woman to re-examine her priorities and learn to receive help from others. All compelling stuff.

But Shapiro is not a writer – she’s a doctor. And it shows. The writing here makes for slow going. Many of the sentences are awkward, featuring redundancies, flabby structure, and switched tenses. The book also features an extremely large cast of characters, with dozens of friends, handfuls of doctors, plus coworkers and family members thrown in, making it difficult to keep track of everyone.

Shapiro’s complete inability to show instead of tell is the book’s greatest flaw. The tone she chooses often makes it seem as though she is reciting her story, making this potentially moving tale read like a report. Great anecdotes (such as how her son wonders why she keeps a bag of “apple juice” by her bed) and deep sorrows (her fear of not being there for her kids’ weddings) aren’t fleshed out with any originality or flair, with Shapiro frequently resorting to clichés to explain her feelings. Threads – like the chapter about her decision on which nipples to choose for her new breasts – end abruptly with no conclusion, leaving the reader wondering what happened.

While Shapiro has a story to tell, one that may be useful, informative, or inspirational for cancer patients and their loved ones, perhaps she should have asked for help writing it.