In this extension of her debut memoir, Dickinson remains an engagingly chatty, witty, and relatable writer with sage...
A popular newspaper columnist candidly shares more memories of her altruistic life, past and present.
In this follow-up to The Mighty Queens of Freeville (2009), Dickinson, the ever wise voice (and Ann Landers successor) behind the widely syndicated “Ask Amy” advice column, is wryly sincere and poignant in her further stories about how she left tiny Freeville, New York, for more adventurous pastures, then returned to downshift through midlife to “resume the lifelong job of growing up.” Her book is rooted in landscape and people, featuring the bucolic hamlet (pop. 520) of her childhood and the family members who live close to the cozy house she inherited from her mother. Dickinson shares deeply entrenched memories of life on the farm in her early years, with a gaggle of siblings and her restless parents, Buck and Jane. The author also examines the domino effect of a deflated marriage, infidelity, single motherhood, and a temporary return to Freeville to regroup before heading off to stints in Washington, D.C., and Chicago. Anchoring the memoir is a gloriously detailed chronicling of her romantic courtship with Bruno, a former high school classmate who would steal her heart back home. Their marriage, when Dickinson was 50, had several minor stumbling blocks but successfully blended together a family of five daughters. “I was a newlywed,” she writes. “An over-the-hill, root-dying, hot-flash-suffering, slightly lumpy newlywed, but still—a bride.” Throughout the book, anecdotes on small-town life, blind dating, and convoluted tree removal intertwine with heart-rending moments about her aging father and stubborn, increasingly frail mother, who forced the author to face the sobering reality of relocating her to a care facility after months of “strategizing, subterfuge, and frustrated coercion.” Readers unfamiliar with Dickinson should begin with her first book, which gives a marvelous overview of a woman returning to her roots to restore her faith in family.
In this extension of her debut memoir, Dickinson remains an engagingly chatty, witty, and relatable writer with sage insights.Pub Date: March 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-35264-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Hachette
Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2017
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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