A gratuitous work of celebrity worship.
One writer’s attempt to “celebrify” her life by following the examples of today’s leading ladies in pop culture.
In her opening introduction, Bertsche (MWF Seeking BFF, 2011) refers to the conundrum of celebrity culture as a classic “chicken-or-the-egg issue” in which she ultimately distills the problem into two questions: “Do we obsess over celebrities because we want to be perfect? Or do we want to be perfect because we obsess over celebrities? There’s no way to be sure.” These are valid questions that underscore the influence of the cult of celebrity, and though there is indeed no immediate answer, the questions themselves are a reminder that society is too fixated on the pursuit of looking and feeling good. This quest for perfection has led Bertsche to idolize a shortlist of celebrity women, all actresses except for Beyonce, who signify excellence in a particular quality of life. The author praises Jennifer Aniston for her toned body, Jennifer Garner for her perfect marriage and Julia Roberts’ Zen-like serenity. Readers witness Bertsche’s transformation from an undisciplined freelancer more likely to sleep in and snack than do yoga and prepare healthy meals into a monomaniacal, slightly watered-down version of a Stepford wife. Most troubling, however, is the book’s coda, which confirms the author’s delusional attitude when she looks forward to the day when she and her daughter can flip through the pages of celebrity magazines and “talk about the aspects of the stars we admire” and objectify at will. While Bertsche’s attempt to mold herself in the image of certain celebrities she believes are exemplars of fashion, physique, cooking, etc., is frivolous and superficial, not to mention at times embarrassing, some readers won’t blame her for at least trying to make a better life for herself, however misguided her efforts.
A gratuitous work of celebrity worship.Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-345-54322-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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