Cancer Ward

I just finished reading Cancer Ward by AleksandrSolzhenitsyn, and it has moved solidly into my my all time top 5 novels. It blew my socks right off.

Every subject that Alex touches on left me feeling like I understand that subject and humanity a little better. Every page is engaging, and the story is raw and real. I believed this story. I believed all of the characters. I've met some of these characters! He writes about love, lust, politics, socialism, medicine, relationships, death, work, joy, despair, betrayal, luck, fate, and the general sexiness of nurses (ok, that last one is a stretch), and he pulls you into each and every one like a master painter pulls you into the subjects on the canvass. Cancer is a metaphor for death, fate, mortality, and parts of Soviet society, but it is also a metaphor for those intangible seemingly random things that draw people together and force them into close and intimate proximity.

My top five is now, in no particular order:

Cancer Ward - AleksandrSolzhenitsyn,

Peace Like A River - Leif Enger,

My Name is Asher Lev - Chaim Potok,

Till We Have Faces - C.S. Lewis,

The Storm - Frederick Buechner.

I've now read this, Ivan Denesovich, and Gulag by AleksandrSolzhenitsyn. I can't wait to start reading everything else. 9.8/10

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I shaved my head today. I shaved my beard today. I shaved off my sense of distance and isolation right down to the skin and let the grief come flooding in.

My friend is having brain surgery today. I will not talk about it on Facebook. I will not throw salvo's of meaningless religious language into that void. I will shave my head and keep my belly empty and hungry.

Run down the hall screaming and crying. That's the sane thing to do. Throw your finger into the Master's face and say "If you would have been here my brother wouldn't have died." The Master calls you blessed for outbursts like that. Then the Master asks where they have put the victim, and then the Master weeps.