Thoughtful, evocative and deeply felt, but occasionally lacking freshness.
A writer born in England in 1968 of Ghanaian parents visits Africa hoping to find the source of his malaise and rage—and a place he might call home.
Eshun (director of London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts) begins this debut work aboard an airplane to Ghana. Although he had lived there in his early childhood, he grew up in England, where he often felt rootless. He writes bitterly about the racism—overt and covert—that he experienced in England. And he recalls with regret a failed relationship with a woman—a relationship that ended, he feels, because he was unwilling to reveal his history. It is a history that has tormented him both in his waking hours and in his dreams. (One great source of unhappiness: His father had served time as a political prisoner in Ghana.) As the author tours Africa, he pauses to tell the history of the region—with sharpest focus on the slave trade. (About halfway through, he hears from a Ghanaian relative some grim, disorienting news about an ancestor.) Touring Ghana, Eshun also discusses his own biography (and those of his parents) and comments on issues that trouble and even haunt him. He is disturbed by some aspects of the country. He sees young people adopting America’s hip-hop culture. He sees other youngsters wearing Osama bin Laden T-shirts. He visits a fundamentalist Christian church where a crass minister demands cash from his congregation. He experiences what he calls the “Big Man” psychology of Ghanaian men—a social posture of superiority many adopt with those they believe are below them in the human hierarchy. He sees poverty and hopelessness. Much of the writing is lyrical and deeply personal, though some of the author’s epiphanies seem more patent than revelational (e.g., “[I]t came to me that journeys never truly end”).
Thoughtful, evocative and deeply felt, but occasionally lacking freshness.Pub Date: June 6, 2006
ISBN: 0-375-42418-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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
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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