The Book of Dahlia: A Novel (edit title)

• Rated 3 stars

“It's okay”

• Rated 2 stars

“This made several "Best Books of 2008" lists, but I waited for the paperback to come out...should've waited a little longer. Paints a terrifically accurate picture of a certain self-indulgent, narcissistic segment of the Millennial Generation, but that's more depressing than even the terminal cancer at the center of the narrative. Judaism was heavy-handed and seemed to play to stereotypes, without self-awareness. I like a good, depressing death & dying story as much as the next person, but it seems to me that I should finally not want that character to die. Here, it was a "consummation devoutly to be wished". ”

• Rated 4 stars

“I know some Dahlia's, and real life experience made me believe in the character as written. Sort of coarse, not overly sentimental. A couple plot lines were on the far edge of believability, but I was compelled to keep reading.”

• Rated 2 stars

“I didn't care for the writing style at all so I didn't finish the book. ”

• Rated 5 stars

“Cancer is not usually a humorous topic. The Book of Dahlia by Elsa Albert, however, manages to bring levity to this weighty subject matter.

While some readers may be put off by Albert’s sharp, gallows, humor, it should be noted that the author lost her brother, David, to a brain tumor when he was twenty nine and she was nineteen. Hence, she knows the delicate terrain she’s traversing.

Dahlia Finger is not a saintly, dying, heroine like Little Women's Beth. Rather Dahlia is profane slacker who has been informed that she has a terminal brain tumor. Dahlia copes with this devastating news: “the way stewardesses pantomime emergency protocol: bored, distracted, disconnected, a mask of seriousness and duty over a deep valley of uncertainty and – buried way, way, way down – fear.”

Albert, who dedicates The Book of Dahlia to her late brother, states that she was trying to honor him with it. In my opinion, she has succeeded! ”

• Rated 1 stars

“Definitely NOT worth reading. ”

• Rated 3 stars

“What I liked about the protagonist in this story was that she refused to succumb to her disease the way everybody else wanted her to do. She died on her own terms, making her an anti-heroine. That is cool. The writing wasn't that good, but if read by any other cancer survivor it can validate that going your own way is OK.”

• Rated 3 stars

“Not the book to read if you know someone going through cancer. This was good, but kind of choppy reading, writing in a very dialogue-ish way.”

• Rated 2 stars

“I read this as a review for Simon & Schuster, not a great book. It started well but I found it got boring quickly and I was skimming a lot. I did enjoy one chapter in which Dahlia who has a brain-tumor just screams, tells off, and curses out most of her family. I didn't really quite understand why she had so much anger with her family, there it was lacking as well. Maybe families of cancer patients could benifit from this book, it wasn't special at all to me.”