I have immense respect for anyone who endeavors to write about what it is like to live with chronic pain. However, I found that this book introduced too many new ideas without clear meaning or any kind of ultimate resolution. Olstein is a good writer and clearly does have interesting and compelling things to say about chronic pain/illness: “I learned there’s no good time to be stricken, and no preparation for being struck.” It was disappointing to see this book’s most meaningful moments buried in a sea of disjointed ideas. ( )

"Pain Studies" is a door open for engagement with Pain, and especially Migraine. Olstein makes access easy with 38 short segments -- all of which are separate entries into the learning venue.

This work is written at the intersection of shared experience, different perceptions of pain, and use of language to cross over and confront its persistence. Through the prison-prism of migraine, Pain Studies episodically and idiosyncratically explores histories of pain--Olstein reaches out so together "we" experience, express, treat, and mistreat pain. As if in a guided meditation, we are engaged with a surprising range of sources. For example, we share in the trial testimony of Joan of Arc, and the television show procedural "House, M.D.". We analyze rhetorical attributes of pre-Socratic philosophy and mathematical proofs. We sort through literary approaches by Virginia Woolf and Elaine Scarry. Olstein brings us into the perception-based studio work of artists Donald Judd and James Turrell. Written from and into its own urgencies of both form and content, we are also able to converse with "pain experts".

I find this little volume constantly but gently inviting me to take it up again. Always a delight to consider anew, an old acquaintance--Oldstein does not need to explain her assumption that Pain inhabits all of us. While the author experiences "Migraine", and I do not, I found the journey she shares to be comforting across my own experiences. We are all wounded in different ways. It helps to have a guided tour of another's experience and learnings. ( )

This is a book-length prose poem, a meditation on pain (specifically, migraines). While there are occasional glimpses of beauty here, much of the prose is plodding - lengthy lists of symptoms, of medical terms, which while effective occasionally as a literary device, are here overused and overwrought.

The author attempts to draw parallels with multiple cultural touchstones - everything from Joan of Arc to House, M.D. - but they lose me when they quote Jonah Lehrer, a disgraced and discredited science journalist. The comparisons here are heavy-handed, facile.

Those who live with chronic pain may find some tidbits to relate to here, but overall this book is not great. ( )

This was a beautiful trip of weirdness with bursts of amazing clarity. Once I realized the author is a poet, I think I appreciated this prose more. I also listened to it on audiobook from the library, and it was an experience like that of a spoken word performance.

Pain is different in every person, yet every person has pain. I’m like the author with times of unrelenting pain that can ebb and flow. I loved how she wove pop culture (House MD) with history (Joan of Arc) along with research and lived experience.

This is definitely an odd read, but I will be returning to it as a kind of solace in understanding as well as lovely prose. ( )

I am part of the way through this book. I had initially put it aside for a bit and then with the coronavirus epidemic I think I was reluctant to read about pain. Originally I’d thought it was a regular memoir, which I would have been up for, but it’s a series of essays. That’s OK in that I’m reasonably intrigued by the ones involving the author’s experience, but she has veered off into discussing Joan of Arc now, and I know she is making larger philosophical points, but she’s rather lost me. It seems like a relatively quick read and I’ll probably finish it at some point, and surely she will get back to her own experience. but reading it isn’t smooth sailing for me.