Fluid reading by the knowledgeable author of Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion.
Absorbing account of the making of a queen through her awful, protracted grief.
To Queen Victoria (1819–1901), her beloved husband Albert was counsel, teacher, co-ruler and more—“King in all but name,” as British historian and Russian expert Rappaport (Conspirator: Lenin in Exile, 2010, etc.) depicts in this readable narrative. Twenty happy years of marriage had produced nine healthy children—unheard of in that era of common infant mortality—and a solid sovereign partnership by 1861. Yet within the year, the unthinkable happened: A mysterious debilitating illness seized her husband, and he died on Dec. 15. Victoria’s all-consuming grief stemmed partly from a deliberate denial of the seriousness of Albert’s disease, both on the part of the doctors and her own willful intractability. A man of regular habits, excellent education, incorruptible rectitude, absolute loyalty and finest culture, Prince Albert had instructed his wife over the years on how to be a proper queen, ironically bolstering her enormous popularity to the detriment of his own. Essentially for the next 10 years she devoted herself to preserving his memory. She erected monuments (a regular “Albertopolis”), banished all pleasures at court, supported an entire industry of black fabrics and jet jewelry and published his speeches and memoir of their life together in Scotland. Eventually the public and the government grew tired of her “luxury of woe” and by year three she was being roundly criticized for her seclusion. Thanks to the loyalty of her favored Highland attendant, John Brown, her fondness for Benjamin Disraeli and her distaste for her profligate heir, Bertie, Queen Victoria got back in the saddle—though Rappaport skates over her transformation in one concluding page, keeping readers wanting more.
Fluid reading by the knowledgeable author of Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion.Pub Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-62105-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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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