Funny and affecting in parts, but on the whole disappointing.
After recounting her experiences with obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette’s syndrome in National Book Award nominee Passing for Normal (1999), Wilensky now chronicles her younger sister’s struggle with obesity and its impact on their relationship.
The author has two stories to tell here. One is of growing up with Alison, only 13 months her junior, who’s fat and then becomes thin through gastric bypass surgery. This story is animated with telling detail and wry humor as perfectionist, bookish Amy and exuberant, nonconformist Alison play and scrap and share as sisters growing up in the ’70s. The second story, unfortunately, is not one the author seems well equipped to tell. She does recall herself as a picky eater and Alison as a voracious one, but she professes not to have realized that her sister was becoming fat or to have noticed until high school that Alison was a secret binge eater. As to why her sister ballooned into obesity as a teenager, Amy offers only her belief that Alison was “born with a biological imperative to gain weight.” The sisters’ lives took separate paths after high school, and outside of a glimpse of Alison coming into her own as an artist at the Rhode Island School of Design, her interior life is not revealed. The author gives lectures on the proper etiquette when confronting fat people, but no insights into one particular fat woman; similarly, she provides information on the gastric bypass procedure Alison chose to have in her late 20s, but nothing on her sister’s reasons for choosing it. After shedding nearly 200 pounds, Alison also doffs her dark, shapeless clothes and starts life over in form-fitting hot pinks and lime greens. It would be nice to hear what the flamboyant former fat girl has to say about her transformation, but readers won’t find it here.
Funny and affecting in parts, but on the whole disappointing.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2004
ISBN: 0-8050-7312-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2003
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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