The Cure – Geeta Anand

$10.87 in paperback from Amazon.com

Buy it if: You TiVo Lifetime movies and don’t mind ‘dramatic reenactments’

Don’t Buy it if: You’re still annoyed that people believe The Perfect Storm is factual…

Real life medical drama? Good. Happened in New Jersey? I’m interested. Pulitzer Prize-winning author? That’s gotta be some kick-ass prose. Made into a big Hollywood movie? Perfect. The book is always better, right?

Such were my thoughts when I picked up Geeta Anand’s The Cure, complete with “The Book that Inspired…” medallion emblazoned on the cover. I had high hopes for the story of John Crowley, a Georgetown, Notre Dame and Harvard grad who turned the full weight of his resume, connections and unbelievably-sized confidence towards finding a treatment for Pompe disease, an extremely rare condition that afflicted two of his three children. Even marginally well-written, such a book should make you feel warm and fuzzy at worst, completely drawn into a fascinating world of medical research, financing and corporations at best.

Yet, as I moved through The Cure, arranged chronologically from the birth of John’s children through the inevitable screenplay, I felt a disquieting disappointment. I’ve been turned off by books before, but I was unable to put my finger on the cause. And that’s when I realized that the book doesn’t have a major problem, it has several minor ones, the summation of which make for reading that I found relatively distasteful, given the potential of the subject matter.

In terms of facts, the book gives the appearance of being well researched. Dates and locations are all noted, corporate financial structures are well defined (though without much given beyond round and vague numbers, raising a minor red flag.) You’d be forgiven for believing that a book authored by a Wall Street Journal reporter would be beyond reproach. However, the footnotes section reads like a full chapter of caveats. Half of the notes begin “Dialogue and details based on interview with…” and then cite the person involved. This is not to say the book is untrue or even near to it…but to have so much information gleaned from interviews with the subject of a recreated scene… You would be not be unwise to approach such recollections with some concern about bias.

Similarly, the prose itself goes a little too far into the dramatic, with a great deal of recreated dialogue and interaction that simply can’t be accepted as completely accurate. People misremember all the time. It’s not a weakness, it’s simply a facet of human existence. My problem with The Cure is that the text itself offers almost no caveat to this effect and very little is borne out of printed and reported facts that may be verified. The book seems to lean heavily on creating a good story while playing a little fast and loose with confirmed facts. It’s the kind of thing you expect from a Hollywood blockbuster that begins with a screen reading “The Following is Based on Actual Events.”

Including a description of John Crowley’s wife Aileen in a ‘low-cut top that tastefully accentuated her ample cleavage’ leads me to believe the author was envisioning this story as a drama to be played out on the page. The result is forced. Again and again Anand tries to heighten the tale with internal emotions and assumption of reason and it feels out of place with the objectivity the subject matter deserves. Leave the ‘ample cleavage’ to the pages of fiction, I’ll happily good money to read about it there!

The remaining issue may actually be a bit of a backhanded compliment: John Crowley is hardly a sympathetic protagonist. He has many failings, arrogance and huge conflicts of interest that lead to questions about the ethical standards to which he holds himself. And yet judgment is left to the reader, or perhaps, ultimately, to an authority far higher. For this, Anand should be commended. It would have been easier (and far more ‘option friendly’) to sugarcoat a few of Crowley’s questionable methods and lapses, but they are all here. It does a lot to resolve questions of integrity, even if it’s not enough to completely erase the book’s shortcomings.

Overall, unless you have a specific interest in this case, I would say The Cure deserves a pass. With the film version having already come and gone from theaters (though I didn’t see it) you might be better served by simply adding ‘Extraordinary Measures’ to your Netflix queue and enjoying a dramatization that is actually billed as such.