Outspoken in her critique of the “Army machine,” Ricketts celebrates the “secret sisterhood” of soldiers’ wives, defiantly...
An Army wife reflects on marriage, war and guilt.
On leave as commander during an 18-month deployment in Iraq, Ricketts’ husband made a startling confession: He was responsible for the torching of a building that resulted in the deaths of women and young children. Although cleared of wrongdoing, he was beset by anguish. As the commander’s wife, charged with keeping up morale among soldiers’ families, Ricketts felt complicit. “Writing this book,” she writes, “is my version of repentance, my version of forcing myself to look at a pile of corpses I helped create….I am both a perpetrator and victim of war, in my own tiny way.” Besides facing her complicity, she shares her sadness at the effect of Army life on her marriage, which deteriorated as her husband, an ambitious career officer, went on repeated deployments, ever longer and more dangerous. Each time he returned, he seemed to be a stranger to her and their children, each time more addicted “to being ‘in the fight’ and the adrenaline rush of battle.” Ricketts vents anger, as well, about much of Army life: its rigid protocol and hierarchy; the “fundraisers and luncheons and newsletters and team-building workshops” that she comes to find meaningless; the “KoolAid”—as she calls euphemisms and propaganda—that the Army perpetuates in its endless PowerPoint “snooze-fests.” Describing herself as “judgmental as hell,” “mischievous” and “borderline devious,” the author zealously scorns the “Perfumed Turd posturing” of pretentious, self-important wives of senior officers. War, she came to realize, is not waged by combat soldiers alone but by women whose marriages and families are disrupted, who raise children as virtual single parents, and who hide overwhelming fears and anxiety as they live with “another new normal” that comes with every new mission.
Outspoken in her critique of the “Army machine,” Ricketts celebrates the “secret sisterhood” of soldiers’ wives, defiantly and desperately battling for survival. A blunt, bold debut memoir.Pub Date: July 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61902-326-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
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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