Melissa Reads :: How to Climb the Eiffel Tower by Elizabeth Hein

Synopsis:

A moving, surprisingly humorous, sometimes snarky novel about life, friendship… and cancer

Lara Blaine believes that she can hide from her past by clinging to a rigid routine of work and exercise. She endures her self-imposed isolation until a cancer diagnosis cracks her hard exterior. Lara’s journey through cancer treatment should be the worst year of her life. Instead, it is the year that she learns how to live. She befriends Jane, another cancer patient who teaches her how to be powerful even in the face of death. Accepting help from the people around her allows Lara to confront the past and discover that she is not alone in the world. With the support of her new friends, Lara gains the courage to love and embrace life. Like climbing the Eiffel Tower, the year Lara meets Jane is tough, painful, and totally worth it.

How to Climb the Eiffel Tower hits stores October 1st. Thank you to Elizabeth Hein, her publisher, and Rosie’s Book Review Team for letting me have an early review copy.

My Rank: 4 cups of coffee

With a horrific past that left her bitter, closed off, and emotionally crippled, it is with the startling diagnosis of cancer that Lara truly begins to heal.

I found the first half rather slow and slightly difficult to remain engaged with, but that’s most likely due to Lara’s prickly personality. Truth be told, she was supposed to be prickly and I believe I was supposed to slowly grow to love her, which I did. By the second half, Lara’s icy exterior began to thaw as she opened up to the love around her and it became a much more pleasant reading experience. In the final scenes, I felt that I was there beside her, holding her hand, wanting to help her climb above all the pain. I give Hein tremendous kudos for a fantastic job at transforming her main character from a hide-in-your-shell turtle to a live and laugh and love butterfly.

Though I enjoyed it and recommend it, there were a few times when I was pulled out of the story, most commonly when Lara repeatedly said oh my god. It got a bit old and it wasn’t necessary.

Overall, a well written novel about friendship, love, courage, and cancer.

 

Favorite Lines

Ellery Cancer Center protruded from the hospital’s facade like a glass tumor.

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“May I sit with you?” I expected the woman’s voice to be as smooth as her grey silk blouse, but it sounded as scratchy as wool against bare skin.

—-

I turned toward the wall and reopened my book. My book friends would protect me from the room full of bewildered people clutching their itineraries like shields against bad news.

—-

I pulled myself up on the exam table and lay back. By the time my head hit the surface, my mind had disengaged from my body. I didn’t feel the thin paper gown slipping down my thighs or the nurse positioning my feet in the stirrups. I had escaped with my book friends. While Dr. Lander dictated copious notes into a handheld recorder, I wandered through Narnia eating Turkish delight with Edmund Pevensie and the White Witch.

—-

I am alive.

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Still, no amount of decorating could mask the oppressive thump of the lead door that signaled that this was yet another place where my body would be subjected to forces the rest of humanity needed to be shielded from.