An inspirational and illuminating exploration of a golf metaphor.
A physical therapist compares his life to a round of golf to determine his score in this debut motivational memoir.
The legendary Ben Hogan once likened life to golf: “As you walk down the fairways of life you must smell the roses, for you only get to play one round.” Huu, a golf enthusiast, takes Hogan’s metaphor further, breaking the 80-plus-year human life into 18 holes and assigning them each a par. “What kind of round have you had so far?” asks the author. “And most importantly, how are you going to finish out this round, the one and only precious one that’s been given to you in this one life that you have to live?” Using his own life as an example, Huu offers an analysis of how the rules of golf overlay neatly onto the experience of growing up and meeting challenges. From losing two balls right at the beginning of the game (the death of his father and his family’s escape from Vietnam) to securing his first birdie (proposing to his wife) to some unlucky shots (like having his business destroyed by Hurricane Katrina), Huu proves that most “holes” in life are a mixed bag. All readers can do is add up their strokes, learn from their mistakes, and try to make up for it on the back nine. Huu writes in a cheerful, self-deprecating prose that easily synchronizes the languages of golf and autobiography: “Because of wonderful people like them during this rough period in my life, I will generously give myself a lucky two-putt from here, to close out the hole with a humbling score of only a double bogey, 6.” For those who don’t know the game well, the author takes time at the beginning to explain the rules and scoring system. For those to whom this sounds like an intellectual exercise taken too far, Huu’s system is actually quite revelatory. The book is perhaps oversaturated with quotes by author Tony Robbins and the like, and certain chapters of Huu’s life are more intriguing than others. But his call to play less conservatively and practice mindfulness is good advice for “golfers” of any age.
An inspirational and illuminating exploration of a golf metaphor.Pub Date: May 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4808-6051-3
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Archway Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 22, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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