Vivian Bearing, a fifty-year-old professor of English literature, is the protagonist of the story. She's spent her life researching and teaching the works of John Donne and other seventeenth-century poets. She is demanding of herself as well as her students. When she's diagnosed with ovarian cancer, she finds that her intellect, wit, and discipline won't help her in her fight for survival. As her body is destroyed by cancer and her pride is destroyed by...

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