A candid, breezy memoir that may inspire even the most dating-averse.
Evans’ (The History of Abortion, 2012) memoir follows her return to the world of dating after two divorces, 12 years of celibacy, and 60 years of living.
In 2003, when Evans had not been on a date in 19 years, she decided to “seek out the touch of a man”—perhaps a courageous choice given what a minefield dating can be at any age. She knew she was taking a risk and defying assumptions: “The normal, respectable sixty-year-old woman was expected to be quiescent sexually—that is what I had expected myself. It was shocking to find out that libido could flame intensely so late in life.” Evans was admirably not quiescent; she was instead proactive in finding sex and companionship. Her primary venues were online, where she encountered men with a wide range of manners and charm. Throughout, she kept an open mind, asking for nonjudgmental clarification when she came across a fetish she wasn’t familiar with and gamely taking trips to such places as a Vermont nude beach. She even traveled to Zimbabwe to meet Guy—a businessman she met on Craigslist—in person. Early on, one of Evans’ friends advised her to turn her dating adventures into “a research project,” and in the sense that Evans is observant, thorough, and informative, her memoir does have a researchlike nature. But it’s also funny and introspective, filled with compassion and written without an ounce of affectation or disingenuousness. Her reflections on the dubiousness of some situations—particularly those relating to the many married men seeking sex—address some of the ethical issues surrounding digital dating, which are well-worth considering. At times, readers may not agree with the author’s stance, but as she notes, she is “not the morality police.” She doesn’t go into detail about her sexual escapades; she’s more interested in exploring the social, biological, and emotional components of sex than depicting the deed itself. Her explorations are illuminating. They’re also a kick, with a surprisingly uplifting effect.
A candid, breezy memoir that may inspire even the most dating-averse.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1631529092
Page Count: 290
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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