A spiritual account that’s too idiosyncratic to resonate with many readers.
In this debut memoir, Hunt, a teacher, describes direct communication with God.
The author, who states that she doesn’t belong to any organized church, considers herself an ordinary person who has an extraordinary relationship with God. Ever since her father’s sudden death when she was 7, she says, God has taken on a paternal role in her life. The connection is unconventional, as she describes it, because it involves God sending the author personal messages. Often, she says, these messages are delivered in “fantastically vivid” dreams that furnish Hunt with “premonitions.” She asserts that she was able to foretell the deaths of her mother and aunt; in her mother’s case, Hunt says that she heard a voice in a dream that disclosed the timing of her passing. Occasionally, she says, a message from God gently reminds her to take better care of herself; she writes that once, after hours of reading traumatic news stories online, she saw a message flash across her screen: “Lisa, stop. Don’t go any further.” The author also states her belief that God personally intervened when she needed help; for example, when she experienced car trouble, an unfamiliar woman pulled over to offer assistance and encouragement, and Hunt was certain that had God sent her: “At a time when I was feeling fearful and helpless, I sincerely believe God sent one of his angels to stand with me during this uncomfortable time.” Hunt’s memoir seems like more of an extended essay than a full-length monograph, and it focuses singularly on her spiritual experience. Her prose is unfailingly clear and its tone is as casual as a friendly chat. The story that she tells is unlikely to convince a large number of readers, but her professed aim is to bear witness, not to persuade. To that end, she successfully conveys her message that God is involved in every aspect of her life: “No matter how small or insignificant the events seem, the circumstances surrounding the events allowed me to see God’s hand in what was happening.”
A spiritual account that’s too idiosyncratic to resonate with many readers.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5127-7294-4
Page Count: 108
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 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
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