It’s Always Something by Gilda Radner

Reviewed by Gerti

For those who don’t know, Gilda Radner was a famous comedian from the early days of the television show “Saturday Night Live,” which has been a staple on TV for decades now. As such, the reader might expect this book to be a comedy riot, along the lines of written offerings from other comedians like Ron White or Chelsea Handler. But it is not, yet that doesn’t make it a bad book.

“It’s Always Something” is more the story of how Gilda Radner went through ups and downs during her eventually losing battle against ovarian cancer. It is one of those books where even though you know how it ends (she is dead, after all), the glory is in the struggle itself, and here Radner lays out her fight against the disease in sometimes agonizing personal detail. She talks about her moods, the doctors and nurses who helped her, her husband, fellow comedian Gene Wilder and HIS struggles with her and her disease, and well as what many of these medical procedures and treatments felt like to her. She shows each stage of the process unflinchingly, laying herself open to criticism even while she talks about her mad search for alternative treatments and her evil and depressive moods.

Yes, she does talk about her unconventional upbringing and her early career, and finally the triumphs that made her a household name and a recognizable face while she was on TV. But that is a small portion of the book. More often, she talks candidly about people from The Wellness Community, the cancer support group she meets with, and her hero worship of the man who founded it, and her relationship with Gene Wilder. She is frank about her lengthy struggle to get Wilder to marry her in the first place, and then about their struggles to keep it together when they have alternate ideas about her cancer treatment modalities. Gilda is beyond honest, always leaving herself painfully vulnerable to the prying eyes of the casual reader. But how can anyone read this story and not be sympathetic to the person who went through so much pain and yet brought so much laughter to the world? It is heartbreaking to see her go through this.

“It’s Always Something” is not a funny book, although there are funny scenes in it. I think it should be read rather by those going through cancer treatments, or the family members and friends of those people, than a typical SNL fan looking for a laugh, as it is more informative than funny. My father died of cancer a few years back, and this book explains in detail what he and other cancer patients experience. Reading it was helpful and healing to me because he never talked about what he was going through at the time. In the end, I’m sorry Gilda Radner died, because even though she succumbed to this terrible disease, she goes on helping people not by sharing laughs, but by sharing the story of her struggle with cancer so candidly.