"So much for that" by Lionel Shriver. Commentary

Our plain-English summary of "So much for that" by Lionel Shriver. Commentary, by R. Dresser (Academic Medicine, 2015).

The study

• Author: R. Dresser
• Journal: Academic Medicine
• Published: 2015;90(8):1052-3
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This is not a research study. It is a short commentary on an excerpt from Lionel Shriver's 2010 novel So Much for That. In the novel, a fictional character named Glynis, an artist in her 50s, has peritoneal mesothelioma, which the commentary calls a rare and serious cancer linked to asbestos exposure. The commentary gives no data on asbestos exposure or disease. The author, a professor of law and medical humanities, wrote that the novel captures how seriously ill patients feel cut off both from healthy people and from their own earlier selves. The author said they had gone through something like this treatment experience. The author wrote that Glynis's fictional doctors talked mainly about treatment options and survival rates and kept to an optimistic script as she declined. The author concluded that the novel exposes a common pattern near the end of life. In it, physicians do not reveal the unwelcome truth and no one stops aggressive treatment. The author said Glynis needs doctors who will give her a realistic idea of her future. The excerpt itself was not in the text provided.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Commentary on an excerpt from a novel (Medicine and the Arts section); not a research study
• Who was studied: No study population; the subject is a fictional character, Glynis, an artist in her 50s with peritoneal mesothelioma, in the novel So Much for That
• Exposure: No exposure was studied; the commentary only describes the character's peritoneal mesothelioma as linked to asbestos exposure
• Main results:
  • The author wrote that seriously ill patients, as portrayed in the novel, experience two kinds of alienation: from the people around them and from their earlier selves
  • The author wrote of having gone through a treatment experience similar to the one described in the excerpt
  • The author described the character's fictional doctors as focusing on treatment options and survival rates and keeping to an optimistic script
• The authors' conclusion: The author concluded that the novel shows how, near the end of life, physicians avoid revealing the unwelcome truth and aggressive treatment continues. The author also wrote that the character Glynis needs doctors who will give her a realistic idea of her future.

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Lung cancer, Mesothelioma.

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