Poignant, creative, and unique.
A Man Booker International Prize–winning translator’s photo-illustrated memoir about how growing up meant growing away from the younger sister she loved.
Changing “names, identifying details, and places,” Croft tells the story of two sisters, Amy and Zoe, that draws on events from her own life. Elder sister Amy was in second grade when Zoe had the first of several seizures. Doctors concluded the episode stemmed from a mild concussion, but after another, more violent episode, scans revealed a tumor in Zoe’s brain. The girls’ parents home-schooled both girls, who developed a rivalry over Olympic ice skaters: Amy favored those from Russia and Zoe those from the Ukraine. When their father hired a Ukrainian-born tutor named Sasha to teach them the language of each girl’s respective favorite country, the girls suddenly found themselves vying for his attention. But as Amy uncovered her linguistic gifts, she also found herself falling in love with Sasha, who later killed himself. She began college shortly afterward at age 15, where she indulged her passion for both languages and photography. In the meantime, Zoe, now homebound, was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus. Consumed by guilt for the misfortunes of both her sister and Sasha, Amy fixated on and then attempted suicide. After she graduated at 18, she left Oklahoma for Berlin, hoping to leave behind her troubled home and become “a whole new person.” Her travels, which she recorded in idiosyncratic photographs, took her all over Europe, where she experienced the epiphany at the heart of this book. Despite the apparent ease with which she moved between countries and languages, Amy’s truest desire was to “fix forever the presence of her sister [and] never let her go” in every photo she shot. Haunting and visually poetic, Croft’s book explores the interplay between words and images and the complexity of sisterly bonds with intelligence, grace, and sensitivity.
Poignant, creative, and unique.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-944700-94-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
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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