A swift, intriguing journey through one man’s unique life.
Du Cane (Five Animal Frolics, 2002, etc.) provides a breezy memoir of his wide-ranging wanderings.
Beginning with accounts of setting things on fire in his youth in Sierra Leone (“I watched in fascination as my plastic truck went up in smoke”), the author goes on to explain many other notable occurrences in his later life. There is, for instance, his time as an experimental filmmaker and critic, during which he mingled with famous and not-so famous characters of the 1970s, with Bianca Jagger in the former group and Canadian avant-garde filmmaker Kris Patterson in the latter. Closer to the present day, during a 2009 trip to China, he found himself detained due to a swine-flu epidemic. It’s an experience that he recalls fondly in a vignette titled “Go Back to Your Room, You Are Under Investigation”: “Living in the lap of luxury at the expense of the Chinese Government was a fair trade for the loss of my freedom for a week.” All told, the author’s journey is a novel one that takes readers to disparate times and places, both physical and emotional, from an overland trip from London to India in 1969 to a reflection on his father’s death in 2012. He shares these experiences in very short chapters, and as a result, the book moves quickly, revealing bits of wisdom that he’s gleaned along the way. For example, after practicing a difficult-sounding form of tai chi called “Chen Style Cannon Fist,” the author came to learn that “I can satisfy my sense of self-worth in many more effective ways than by leaping up and down on hard floors to impress my teacher.” Many other memoirs plod through the past with painstaking description, but this one glides across its surface. The book is relatively short at less than 100 pages, and although the picture is not always complete (for instance, what made Du Cane turn away from experimental filmmaking?), the ease of the prose allows for an inviting, brisk experience.
A swift, intriguing journey through one man’s unique life.Pub Date: May 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5464-4965-2
Page Count: 94
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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