A somber, moving tribute to a life of ideals and struggle.
A beautifully crafted, searing memoir by the Chilean American writer about his dispersion and homelessness after fleeing the military junta of General Pinochet.
As a deeply engaged supporter of President Salvadore Allende, Dorfman (Desert Memories: Journeys Through the Chilean North, 2004, etc.) was banished from Chile when Pinochet seized power in 1973, assassinating the president and throwing the country into a convulsion of military repression and fear. Along with his wife and small son, Dorfman first sought refuge in Argentina (where he was born in 1942), then Amsterdam, Paris and finally the United States over the next 20 years—a bitter exile that defined and transformed him. A child of “perpetual wanderers”—his father, a communist, had been forced to leave Argentina with the family for Chile, then the U.S., before being hounded out during the McCarthy era—Dorfman was familiar with the miseries and loneliness of exile. He learned English early until his return to Chile at age 12, then immersed himself in the “language of insurrection,” Spanish. In exile, he used English to promote his lifelong pursuit to “vanquish silence” and expose the hideous human-rights abuses of the Pinochet dictatorship. Dorfman writes eloquently, even floridly, about his fiery early devotion to the peaceful socialist revolution of Allende, and that he and his starry-eyed generation were absolutely blindsided by the coup. In exile, his creative powers dried up (“What was happening to me, to us, was quite literally, unspeakable”), until he found courage in expression—his words would become “a territory where the dead could resuscitate.” Dorfman writes frankly of the morphing of his ideals, the seduction of America, the wariness with which he is regarded now by his Chilean compatriots and how he and his family decided not to stay in Chile when they finally returned in 1990.
A somber, moving tribute to a life of ideals and struggle.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-54946-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2011
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
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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