Life-affirmative and eccentrically inspirational.
The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of imparts life lessons and sage wisdom through the care and feeding of a delightful flock of chickens.
Walker (Hard Times Require Furious Dancing: New Poems, 2010, etc.) realized that as a serious egg-lover, it would behoove her to “get to know the chickens laying them.” She soon hatched an agreement with a family nearby to raise them together in the rudimentary Northern California wine country neighborhood where she’s lived for 30 years. As offbeat as it may seem, Walker developed a profound attachment and an intrinsic contentment by befriending her nine “undeniably gorgeous” chickens. Often found crouched and crowing in her lap and balanced upon her shoulders, the author named each of them personally (Gertrude Stein, Babe, Rufus, Gladys, Glorious, etc.), contemplated their behaviors and researched their varietal breeds. The memoir is, in part, an assemblage of chronological entries from the author’s blog, and spans from present-day farming time to her youth in rural Georgia, where she acquired an appreciation for animals and music. The second half of the book includes poems and letters she’s written to the chickens while traveling. At their strongest, these short essays are illuminating and wonderfully wacky ruminations from the earth-conscious mind of a “run-of-the-mill mostly vegetarian person.” Walker’s sage, compassionate memoir is meant to be savored and contemplated; fans will appreciate the devoted nurturing of her feathered backyard brood as the embodiment of a lifetime spent cultivating peace, harmony and the “wonder and spontaneity of Nature.”
Life-affirmative and eccentrically inspirational.Pub Date: May 3, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59558-645-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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