Sixty-Five Roses: A Sister's Memoir

An honest, chilling tale of a family dealing with chronic illness, this memoir's subject is Cariou's sister, Pam, who at the age of four was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis, a terminal disease of the lungs and pancreas marked by severe coughing and malnutrition; unable to pronounce her condition, young Pam dubs it instead ""Sixtyfive Roses."" What follows is no heartwarming tearjerker; early on, Cariou cagily warns that ""the world of chronic-terminal illness is, in many ways, akin to the world of war."" Written to fulfill a deathbed promise Cariou made to write ""our"" story, and a promise to her mother to tell the truth, the result frequently is not pretty. Initially given no more than six years to live, Pam was among the first wave of Cystics to reach adulthood (she died at 25), but her life is a daily struggle, crammed with treatments, hospitalizations, false starts and faint hope, setbacks and unfulfilled dreams. Cariou keeps readers distanced with an unemotional account that invites more wary ambivalence than sympathy, a risky technique that may put off some readers, but communicates well the complicated feelings that long-term illness can breed in families.