A memoir/essay collection of consistently heartfelt and enlightening morsels of humanity.
Creatively dispatched memories from a noted essayist and fiction writer.
In his first foray into nonfiction, novelist Skibell (A Curable Romantic, 2010, etc.) touches on themes of identity, parental mortality, Judaism, and all of the foibles encountered within a close-knit lineage. The bonds of family figure greatly in these fondly depicted stories. In the resonant title piece, the first musical instrument the author’s father, a family businessman, bought him as a youngster—a Fender guitar—incites a “laughably Freudian” correlation to another guitar his father would later purchase as well as yet another he bought to perpetuate his father’s memory. Elsewhere, the author details his clumsy navigation around female students at college as a self-described “sexual maladroit” who dropped out of graduate school and dated a woman haunted by ghosts, a supernatural concept that he, then 23, mocked and arrogantly debunked with theoretical gibberish. Throughout the collection, Skibell makes plenty of room for humor. Though his family scoffed at his interest in learning the universal language Esperanto, he persevered “like a postman through the snow and the sleet and the gloom of their derision” only to hilariously turn the tables on a telemarketer by requesting they sponsor his classes. Another entry finds the author getting sweet comeuppance on a cousin who posted a negative review of his second novel online. The lengthier essays detail Skibell’s trials through his years struggling as a screenwriter in Hollywood and the histrionic heritage of his father’s cousin Tiger. In the closing essay, the author reflects on the occupational hazards of being a published author and the revelations that can occur after listening to a complete stranger’s tale of woe. Colorful and endearing, the book will appeal to readers who appreciate Augusten Burroughs–style, real-life anecdotal ponderings focused on familial ties and how life’s eternal cycle of enchantment and disillusionment somehow sustains us.
A memoir/essay collection of consistently heartfelt and enlightening morsels of humanity.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-56512-930-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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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