Readers able to put aside the larger picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will find here a very human, up-close, and...
A searing memoir of daily life in Gaza from July 6 to Aug. 26, 2014, when the territory was under constant bombardment by Israel.
Palestinian political scientist, columnist, and novelist Abu Saif (A Suspended Life, 2014, etc.), who was born in 1973 in the Jabalia Refugee Camp in Gaza, describes moment to moment the experience of living under fire. While shells fly in from ships at sea and rockets from tanks on the ground, it is the drones overhead that fill the author with dread. As he writes while breaking the fast during Ramadan, “the drone eats with me.” Abu Saif’s diary shows the horror in detail: the sounds, the smells, the sights. He is a husband and father intent on keeping his family safe, though he knows he cannot. Anyone looking for an analysis of the political situation, a discussion of who started the conflict and why, will not find it here. What the author offers instead is a vivid picture of living surrounded by death and destruction, going to sleep hoping you will awake, fearing for the safety of your loved ones, seeing the fear in your children’s eyes, and knowing that the next bomb could be the one that destroys them all. The diary has been augmented after the fact to provide additional information: when a day’s entry gives the numbers of Palestinians killed, footnotes often give the names of the individuals; maps of Gaza highlight areas under attack, providing a guide to readers unfamiliar with the geography of the territory; and end-of-book notes offer further background. Portions of this diary appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, and Slate, and the book was previously published in England last year.
Readers able to put aside the larger picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will find here a very human, up-close, and personal picture of war.Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8070-4910-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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