An engrossing, inspirational call for a medicine that takes the soul as seriously as the body.
A doctor explores a world of treatments beyond pharmaceuticals and surgery in this searching investigation of wellness.
Kalaichandran, a pediatrician and journalist, starts by revisiting her travails working at an Ontario hospital where, she says, the hostility of senior staff caused her to develop anxiety, depression, and high cholesterol levels. The ordeal prompted her to research connections between mental and physical healing and embark on a tour of alternate therapies. The journey took her to a yoga training retreat in Mexico; a mass hypnosis session, which opened insights into the placebo effect (fake surgeries can be as effective as real ones in alleviating orthopedic pain and disability, she reports); new foods (she adopted the Mediterranean and Portfolio Diets and light fasting); and a trip on MDMA—ecstasy—to see whether psychedelics really do alleviate intractable mental problems. (As advertised, the experience showed her “a side to our existence that felt sublime and…connected to the larger universe,” she writes.) Kalaichandran also probes darker aspects of the medical profession that contribute to the unhappiness of doctors. These include residents’ sleep deprivation from 24-hour shifts (the practice was popularized by a cocaine-addicted surgeon, she notes), toxic hospital office politics, and bullying campaigns conducted by powerful doctors against underlings because of personal grudges, racism, and sexism—a dynamic that she credits with causing her own mental health issues. Kalaichandran presents a lucid, nuanced account of the science behind the unconventional ideas she explored amid an intricate analysis of social and psychological determinants of disease, drawing on observations of her own patients. Beyond the lucid exposition of studies and theories, there’s an evocative, spiritual richness in her prose, as when, for example, she analyzes the importance of accepting the inevitable through a plangent recollection of a patient dying of cancer: “And so, Priya had passed away, as a slow withering out of this world, while her mother fought her own resistance around letting go among the machines and cords and fluorescent lights of a small ICU room.” The result is a fascinating, hopeful meditation on sickness and recovery.
An engrossing, inspirational call for a medicine that takes the soul as seriously as the body.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781956474558
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Heliotrope Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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