Jackson's book is a timely and necessary contribution to this important dialogue. -- The Globe and Mail

Jackson's compelling voice, in turns perfectly ironic, intrigued, and introspective, carries readers through no fewer than 33 chapters. Her vibrant curiosity and fearless theorizing makes this book far-reaching in scope, interest and, yes, profundity -- The Vancouver Sun

[Pain will] impart a few invaluable lessons and allow a few opportunities to empathize with others, cringe in recognition and even lagh out loud.In brief and highly readable chapters, Jackson explores the history of pain and the various philosophies and studies that have attempted to understand and tame it. -- Winnipeg Free Press

Given that this medicalized, pain-ridden society is ours for a while, we had better keep this book beside the bed and absorb its comfort and compassion in large doses. -- The Kingston Whig-Standard, The Gazette (Montreal)

Engrossing. Jackson, a skilled and sensitive writer, argues that science must learn learn to listen and respond and that doctors need to look beyond isolated symptoms to find the underling story. -- The Edmonton Journal

In Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign , Marni Jackson bravely tackles one of the most misunderstood and elusive subjects known to mankind. In so doing, she gives words to something that stubbornly defies language. This has to be one of the most difficult literary tasks imaginable.an important book. -- NOW magazine

Absorbing. If all her new book did was inform readers about this unexplored terrain, the Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign would be worth reading. But it does much more: it entertains, challenges and, ultimately, enlightens. -- The Gazette (Montreal)

[Pain ] is a good read. It is comprehensive, intelligent and balanced. It puts a human face on pain, but clearly elucidates concepts as well. And it provides unexpected byways, never allowing the reader to become bored.The reader can never be sure what will be just around the corner on this journey. -- The Hamilton Spectator
 

Extended Excerpts

The TORONTO STAR

Sunday, July 14, 2002

Along with sex and death, pain remains banal, fascinating and one of humankind's enduring riddles. ...Good research, reporting and a lively prose style certainly mark the chapters on Florence Nightingale, Ronald Melzack (respected author of The Textbook Of Pain), meditation, the History of Pain Project in L.A. and the wrenching final days of novelist Carole Corbeil.

Jackson somehow weaves ideas from Plato, Saul Bellow, Viktor Frankl and Anne Carson around her own struggles with endometriosis. In a lovely coda, Jackson brings us back to the cabin: "Coming up the path to the cabin in the dark, my mind open and aimless, strange thoughts popped into my head Ñ that the body with its ordinary pains is also a forked branch that can point to a hidden, underground stream of historical pain." Here, Jackson explores the many meanings of pain in a finely layered piece that folds together personal narrative, science, history and culture.

The Globe & Mail - GlobeBooks (Cover)
Saturday, June 1, 2002

In her insightful new book on this perplexing and endlessly morphing subject Jackson admits to being drawn to the culture's largely unexplored and silent spaces, pain being one. Her first book, Mother Zone (1992), was a highly regarded and much-loved examination of another: the interior life of contemporary motherhood. In fact, Jackson's book might also be subtitled A Guided Tour of Pain, for it's conceived as a kind of journey, a zigzagging series of encounters with Jackson as our sympathetic guide.

Jackson grounds her journeying in her personal experiences of pain -- migraine, endometriosis, mild depression, a very bad day at the dentist -- and that of various family members. She muses on such matters as the transfer of pain between generations and takes inventive approaches to the tricky issue of how to talk about pain, including a section in which pain is personified as a Scotch-swilling seducer, which I found appealing

.. behind Jackson's wandering encounters pulses a compelling argument for putting culture back into our thinking about pain. As the phenomenon of pain has been taken over by the medical profession, and we concentrate simply on extinguishing it, we have lost a broader sense of its possible meanings. This may be dangerous to our collective health. Culture shapes our experience of pain. The stories we tell about our pain are essential to our understanding of it. Propelled by curiosity and a lucid and accessible intelligence, Jackson's book is a timely and necessary contribution to this important dialogue.

Catherine Bush, author of the novel The Rules of Engagement, is currently writing a novel about the experience of chronic pain. Copyright © 2002 Bell Globemedia Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

See Also:  "Outing Pain: Ellen Vanstone Interviews Marni Jackson" Globe & Mail Books, Sat., June 1

***

National Post

The mystery of pain by Brad Evenson       Saturday, June 15, 2002

Jackson understands this spiritual dimension of pain better than most people. She is particularly effective in exploring the lives of people such as Reverend Ken Martin, a United Church minister whose neck was injured in a car accident and whose name she chanced upon in a newspaper article, and Debbie, a former paramedic she met in yoga class. "Debbie seemed to be balanced and credible in every way, but at a certain point in listening to anybody's pain story, doubt creeps in," she writes.

"Instead of focusing on what doctors don't know about backs, you start to wonder what the person is doing wrong. Is this the story of one unlucky fall and its consequences, I thought, or just the latest drama in someone's neurotic relationship to pain?"

This is what pain does, Jackson says. It causes doubt, both in the sufferers and those around them.

At times I wanted to shout, "Get over it!" That's part of the point: this reaction to suffering is unfortunately common. We tend to push away those in pain, rather than rally around them. The emotion is too overwhelming.

Researchers still have a lot to learn about pain. It's hard to slide suffering under a microscope. But geneticists have found a good pain source for their pain models: bee venom. "A bee sting is a classic pain, the type we can learn a lot from," [Dr. Ron] Melzack tells Jackson near the end of her research. Of course, by then, she has already convinced us of this fact.

***

NOW MAGAZINE
Pain Staking   by Elizabeth Bromstein             June 6 - 12, 2002

IN PAIN: THE FIFTH VITAL SIGN, Marni Jackson bravely tackles one of the most misunderstood and elusive subjects known to humankind. In so doing, she gives words to something that stubbornly defies language. This has to be one of the most difficult literary tasks imaginable. Seeking the reasons why something so universal is so poorly understood, Jackson delves into the history of pain, looking forward to future possibilities, sharing the stories of people living with pain and interviewing experts.

Viewing her subject from all angles and leaving no dusty corners, Jackson looks at self-mutilation and masochism along with every imaginable form of non-self-inflicted suffering -- from the more tangible migraines and fibromyalgia to the esoteric phantom limb pain (the most fascinating and illustrative of just how cryptic a subject this really is); good pain and bad pain; mental and physical pain -- and our relationships with all of them.

***

Quill & Quire  

"Far-reaching and idiosyncratic ... Jackson is the ideal guide for this exploration. With her personal and personable perspective, she acts as a surrogate for the reader, simplifying complex issues ... and humanizing often abstract concepts. Jackson leavens this very serious subject matter with a wicked and subversive sense of humour."  

***

Barbara Gowdy, author of The White Bone and We So Seldom Look On Love

"An utterly engrossing, strangely uplifting journey into the dark but wondrous corners of human suffering. By giving language to a subject that seems to defy language, Marni Jackson performs a kind of miracle of insight and compassion...a groundbreaking book by one of the most original writers at work today."
 

***

Library Journal

Canadian journalist and essayist Jackson (The Mother Zone: Love, Sex and Laundry in the Modern Family) seems to have suffered from just about every pain that a woman can endure, including menstrual cramps, endometriosis, and child birth as well as such gender-neutral pain as migraines, bee stings, and dental work ø and she writes about it without a word of self-pity.Ê She calls on friends, relatives, and professionals to discuss such topics ad an unmedicated Caesarian section, intractable cancer pain, interspersing her narrative with personal reflections and interviews.Ê

She also attended a number of professional pain conferences and interviewed experts in the field.Ê One compelling narrative describes a Canadian womans longstanding back pain after a severe fall, cured by the Feldenkrais method; another is the story of the late performance artist Bob Flanagan, who dealt with the pain caused by his disease by becoming a masochist. ÊThe books title is derived from the American Pain Societys goal of elevating awareness of pain treatment among healthcare professionals.Ê This is not a how-to pain control book, such as Margaret Caudills Managing Pain Before It Manages You, nor does Jackson attempt to cover the gamut of pain.Ê Instead, she has written a breezily readable social history of pain.Ê Recommended for popular nonfiction collections in public libraries.Ê -- Martha E. Stone, Massachusetts General Hops. Lib. Boston.Ê

***

Booklist  

Many patients and physicians have wished for a way to quantify pain as we do the other vital signsÑblood pressure, temperature, heart beat, and respiration. Jackson explores the history, variety, acknowledgment, and treatment of pain, the fifth vital sign, accessibly and sympathetically, lending the subject personalism by citing her own experiences of pain, which range from a bee sting to her open mouth to anesthetic failure in the middle of a dental operation.

She also mines the medical annals, citing such authorities as S. Weir Mitchell and William Livingston, and various literary works. Her interviews with pain experts make lively reading as she queries the likes of Angela Mailis of the Comprehensive Pain Program in Toronto, and Frank Adams, who was found guilty of "medical incompetence and unprofessional conduct" for humanely treating his patients' pain. Finally, her account of the Ninth World Congress on the Study of Pain, in Vienna, graphically depicts the complexity of a large meeting. A book for medical-school and hospital as well as public libraries. William Beatty. Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.

Praise for The Mother Zone (1992)