Much different from most musicians’ memoirs and of much interest to all who wrestle to understand tragedies of their own.
Country music singer Moorer recounts a scarifying, life-defining event: the murder-suicide of her parents.
“Someone can take himself out, fine, but they leave behind those who love them with a never-ending list of questions and a shadow hanging over everything, like a dark triptych in the middle of the room.” So writes Moorer, who, like her sister, fellow country singer Shelby Lynne, has been living for more than 30 years with the memory of the gunshots by which her father killed her mother and then turned the gun on himself. Moorer is her own Rashomon, exploring that terrible event from every possible side, examining the living, recalling the words of the dead, concluding that, given the abuse and alcohol that flowed through the relationship, the end seemed inevitable. The dark triptych of which she writes represents a hazy unknowability, the list of questions keys that can never be recovered since the answers can never come. Affecting in its cleareyed depiction of the lives that are shattered all around the immediate victims, including her then-14-year-old self, Moorer’s account examines the lingering effects—e.g., mistrust and a habit of leaving relationships before they’re over. “Let me store resentments like I’m canning vegetables for the winter” she writes, “so I’ll slowly develop a deep, smoldering hatred in return for my deep disappointment.” Yet she tried to think of herself in terms other than the daughter of a murderer, the daughter of a murder victim. There is much wisdom in her experience as well as in her reflections on what she has read and heard, as with her note that one great step forward is to “give up hope for a better past.” That her past is worse than most has posed countless challenges, it’s evident in these pages, but Moorer confronts it with an unblinking honesty that is sometimes long on self-doubt and short on comfort.
Much different from most musicians’ memoirs and of much interest to all who wrestle to understand tragedies of their own.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-306-92268-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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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