Out of Joint: A Private and Public Story of Arthritis

Mary Lowenthal Felstiner has written an important book on many levels. Out of Joint should become the classic for anyone struggling with a chronic problem, be it physical or mental. Mary has an amazing ability to express what so many of us feel ...but in an original, refreshing, and totally unique way. I loved her refusal to quit or to accept that nothing more could be done. Like that energetic bunny, she just kept on going, searching for probable causes, exploring possible cures, and keeping a constant, sometimes hilarious, dialogue with herself. This book is also a lesson in how to go about family life and love the RIGHT way...an inspiration to us all.

Buy this book! And discover the magic which Mary Felstiner, a prize-winning professor of history, brings to words. This story about rheumatoid arthritis is a page-turner. Felstiner's gift for mixing plain speech with the technical and erudite is totally astounding. Further, she demonstrates the healing potential of narrative, a multi-faceted narrative glinting with allusion. Through her account, Felstiner manages to make us proud to be human, capable at the same time of suffering and transcendence. Five stars.

I enjoyed this book so greatly. I love the way Mary Felstiner approaches the subject of joints, jointedness, connection, from such varied angles, using documents of cultural, personal, and medical history. Magnificent!! What a huge accomplishment this book represents. Apart from all else, I've learned a staggering amount from this gifted author about the body in a cultural context, and this has illuminated a lot of questions in my own life.

Although I had intended to read Out of Joint slowly, chapter by chapter, once I began the momentum built until I stayed up extremely late one night to finish it. It is a gorgeous, haunting, painful, exhilarating, breathtaking book, and one that is as much poetry as powerful analysis. This is a deeply courageous book, one willing to stay inside the pain and the joints---I felt almost as if I were right in there, almost inside this body. The book conveys that bodily presence so beautifully, it is quite amazing. It also conveys both movement and stasis, a sense of the endlessness of pain, but through it all the movements of the author's mind, as she explored different facets of it, and in many different sites--library, clinic, home, mountainside, street, office, and classroom. I felt as if I were traveling along with her, on a sort of Pilgrim's Progress, on a quest, even if there is no ultimate resolution, though there are moments of release and exultation. This will become a classic text, not just about arthritis but about writing, and about memoir, and about the body. I hope it will be read widely everywhere. Many thanks for writing such a wise and generous and sensuous book, one that, even in the darkness, is full of light!

Finally, a book that addresses not only the physical effects but also the emotional effects of Rheumatoid Arthritis. Mary Felstiner graciously allows the reader to join her on an honest and difficult journey of pain and acceptance. She offers insight and understanding to a disease that does not get the attention it deserves. If you have an autoimmune disease or love someone that does, this book is a must read.