Both heartbreaking and uplifting, the book resonates on basic human and spiritual levels.
Breedlove pays tribute to her irrepressible, fun-loving younger brother, Ben Breedlove, who died from a heart condition when he was only 18 years old. Just days before his death, he posted video a video online, “This Is My Story,” which reached millions of viewers around the world with his message of faith.
Ben had only been in the world three months when his parents learned he had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a heart condition that causes dangerous arrhythmias. Eager to do whatever was needed to help Ben, the parents were told, “You can’t fix it.” So they lived with it and did everything they could to give their son a normal life. Though health problems often kept him out of school, Ben readily made friends with his easy smile, sense of humor and caring nature. His greatest pleasure was making videos with his friends, eventually launching an online advice program for teenagers. In writing about her brother, Ally uses a third-person perspective at odds with the personal nature of the story, but she wins readers over with the genuine, heartfelt tone. Ally and Ben’s parents, determined to allow their son to live life as fully as possible, remained vigilant without being overprotective. By the time he was a teenager, Ben’s heart problems had grown increasingly worse. Then, one day at school, he passed out. While the emergency team worked to bring him back from the brink, he experienced a dream or vision. He didn’t know what to call it, but what he saw put him at peace with death. After this traumatic event, he described his experience in his video and posed the question: “Do you believe in angels or God?” He answered, “I do.” These words comforted his family and inspired people of many nationalities and faiths.
Both heartbreaking and uplifting, the book resonates on basic human and spiritual levels.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-451-23964-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
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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