cover image Gardening in Clay: Reflections on AIDS

Gardening in Clay: Reflections on AIDS

Ronald O. Valdiserri. Cornell University Press, $17.95 (107pp) ISBN 978-0-8014-2981-1

In 26 brief, earnest but ineffectual essays about AIDS, Valdiserri draws on personal as well as professional experience: a physician at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he saw his twin brother die of the disease. The title piece discusses the author's struggle to grow flowers in the clay soil of his garden as a metaphor for the perseverance needed in the dispiriting fight against AIDS. Although Valdiserri strives to invest familiar themes with new energy--the instructiveness of adversity, the persistent prejudice that characterizes illness as a failure of personal responsibility, the solace a pet can provide--the essays are not well enough crafted to turn platitudes, however heartfelt, into good literature. Valdisseri only sporadically writes of his complex yet shadowy relationship with his ailing twin brother, who is usually sentimentalized in these essays. (May)