-So if I were recommending this book, it would come with a warning that a fair amount of this book is rage-inducing and saddening. We have two competing narratives. In one, we get the history of the development of a soap company beginning in the mid-19th century in the Northeast through the late 1990s. This begins with two brothers coming up with a process to mass-produce soap, to reduce the oily residue from glycerine, and then through the Gilded Age’s development of corporations (in the modern sense), the rise of adverstising-driven development, the post-WWII chemical breakthroughs, pollution of the 1970s, and the legal backlash of the 1980s and 1990s.
The other narrative is the story of a woman’s cancer diagnosis, treatmnet, and beyond. Laura is our main protagonist in the novel, and when she develops ovarian cancer, she immediately jumps into treatment. Between her not great boyfriend, her detached but caring kids, and her burdensome but caring ex-husband, she navigates this process with varying amounts of support. She also slowly begins to reckon with both the real possiblility that the soap company, whose town she lives in, is most likely responsible, and the even realer possibility that knowing that won’t save her or lead to any meaningful accountability.
The novel is a real attempt to reckon with globalization, chemical companies, cancer, and the world economy, as well as family, death, selfhood. And well, it does what good novels do: frame the questions and admit defeat on the answers.
(Photo: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23013.Gain?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=B6BkvMsHFr&rank=45)