The continuing autobiographical chronicles of an Irish woman at midlife. Taylor's fourth volume of reminiscences (The Village, 1993; etc.) continues her series of sketches on life in a small village near Cork. With most of her children grown or in their teens, the stories now focus on Taylor herself. Each sketch is self-contained, lending a disjointed quality to the book. Tales vary from the slapstick (as she details the reburial of a stolen skull) to the sentimental (as she recounts a visit with a friend whose son has Down's syndrome). She's most enjoyable when writing about her family, whether it's a trip with her Doc Martenwearing niece to buy suitable wedding attire or her Aunt Mary's troublesome visits. The volume opens with a childhood memory of her grandmother's corset: ``as Nanna's corset hit the leg of the iron bed with a clatter of bone and steel, I wondered if she had ever been young.'' Her language fares better in prose than in the short poems interspersed between some of the chapters, which lack any edge at all. In the midst of Taylor's more humorous anecdotes, are a few revealing her individual quest for spirituality. A devout Catholic, she remains open to widening her religious practice, whether this involves going on an arduous retreat or to a prayer meeting. Readers may be drawn to Taylor because of her easy narrative and the glimpse she offers of Ireland. Indeed, Taylor's greatest strength is her sense of place. As she writes of her father's death, it is clear that knowing he was the seventh generation of her family to live and farm his land is of great comfort. It is common for Irish-Americans to idealize Ireland. However, as Taylor's writing illustrates, the land can indeed offer much real wisdom. Quiet, entertaining tales of special interest to readers nostalgic for a slice of Irish life.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-11763-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
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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