Review: What I Thought I Knew by Alice Eve Cohen

What I Thought I Knew by Alice Eve Cohen tells an extraordinary story: after being infertile and on hormone replacement therapy since the age of 30, forty-four-year-old Cohen begins experiencing mysterious symptoms that lead her to suspect she has cancer. Doctors can’t figure out what’s wrong with her for months until an emergency CAT scan finally reveals the truth: Cohen is six months pregnant. Cohen is a playwright and solo theatre artist with an adoptive daughter and a wonderful fiancé who is 10 years her junior. Being pregnant at that point in her life was definitely not part of her plan. (And what I’ve mentioned so far is just the tip of the iceberg of craziness that is this pregnancy.) What I Thought I Knew is an engrossing read—once I started the book, I didn’t want to put it down. Cohen structures her memoir much like a play—it’s written in three acts, which are in turn divided into multiple scenes—and this gives the story both immediacy and power. Throughout the book she also makes lists of what she knows, which only serve to highlight how much in fact she doesn’t know about what’s going on. Still, her dark humour and wit only worked to a point—they occasionally felt forced to me, like she was trying too hard. In contrast, my favourite parts of the book were the solo theatre sections, which deal with the one class she continued to teach throughout this period. Cohen writes the story of her student Dani Athena with a quiet thoughtfulness that I wished she had applied more often to her own story, which instead builds to a near-hysterical pitch. Nevertheless, I admire Cohen for being so honest and upfront about what she went through during this very difficult period of her life. Her story is definitely one that deserves to be heard.

What I Thought I Knew won the Elle Magazine Literary Grand Prix for Nonfiction in 2009.

Thank you to BookSparks PR and Penguin USA for sending me this book to review.
_______________________________________________

BookSparks PR organized a blog tour of What I Thought I Knew from October to December:

Reviews:

Entertainment Realm • Always with a Book • 5 Minutes for Books • The Book Chick • My Book Views • Reading at the Beach • Chocolate Reality • Luxury Reading (spoiler alert!) • Bookfan • cindyREADS • Bless Their Hearts Mom • Teresa’s Reading Corner • Booking Mama (spoiler alert!) • Schlough’s Bookshelf Review • Books and Needlepoint • Sharon’s Garden of Book Reviews (spoiler alert!) • All about {n} • The Divining Wand • Rundpinne • Chick Lit Central • Bermudaonion’s Weblog • BookNAround (review & interview) • Book Addiction • ’Til We Read Again • A Bookworm’s World (review & guest post) • Books, Movies & Chinese Food • Crazy for Books • Bookhounds • At Home with Books • Everyday I Write the Book (spoiler alert!) • Books and Movies • Bookin’ with Bingo (review & interview)

Guest posts:

Parking Lot Confessional • My Book Views • Reading at the Beach • Chocolate Reality • Luxury Reading • Bless Their Hearts Mom • Book End Babes • Booking Mama • Books and Needlepoint • The Eclectic Reader (interview & giveaway) • Lori’s Reading Corner • The Page 99 Test

Interviews with the author:

AuthorScoop • mom logic • Chocolate Reality • Teresa’s Reading Corner • The Divining Wand • Chick Lit Central

Other reviews: Shhh I’m Reading • Of Books and Reading

Excerpt from the book: The New York Times
_______________________________________________