In December, Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown, $26.00) made almost every best-of-the-year list I looked at, and has maintained a healthy presence on the New York Times bestseller list for months and months. It’s unavoidable—despite its aggressively psychedelic jacket and somewhat depressing story, this book has legs.I first saw the book in bound galley form. In an attempt to drum up internal publicity for Henrietta, a stack had been placed in our office kitchen, free for the taking. I was intrigued. I grabbed one. It stayed on my list well after its publication, beckoning but as yet unread, until I finally gave it to my sister for a flight home. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll get another.”
I did, and am I ever glad. Skloot’s account isn’t perfect—her writing feels a little too loose at times, and the reader is in for a couple of upsetting surprises at the book’s close—but I couldn’t put it down. Often extremely moving, Henrietta is a story of injustice whose greatest payoff comes in small moments of generosity to the Lacks family. Doctors who explain, in simplified and accessible terms, what a gene is; an archivist moved nearly to tears by the family's plight: these are the people who deal with the Lackses on human terms. In scenes like this, Skloot almost restores our faith in the kindness of strangers.
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