Article October 30, 2000 Issue

Book review of Science and Health

By Gail Gilliland

When the editors of the Sentinel called last summer to ask if I would write a "book review" of Science and Health, I was editing the final draft of my own collection of short stories for publication—and for a break, I'd signed on to review a novel for The New York Times. I've enjoyed reviewing books for papers around the United States for a number of years, and since I like to be treated fairly when it comes time to be reviewed, I've always tried to be fair myself.

But the assignment to write a fair and honest review of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy seemed a daunting task. "I'm sorry," I wanted to tell the editors. "I wouldn't dare!" I've read and studied Science and Health ever since I was a teenager, and together with the Bible, it has helped me find comfort and direction and healing many times. Perhaps because it means so much to me, I've always found it difficult to talk to others—much less write—about this book.

Reading Science and Health is a very intimate experience. No new reader or reviewer has probably ever described this book the same way twice. The last chapter, "Fruitage," retains original turn-of-the-century, first-person accounts of the book's effect on some of its early readers, and the Christian Science periodicals have continued, for almost as long as the book itself has been in print, to offer "testimonies" of healing that follow in that first-person narrative genre.

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