A candid rendering of pain and survival.
A daughter’s raw memoir exposes her “spiteful, vindictive, uncontrollable mother.”
Journalist Leve (It Could Be Worse, You Could Be Me, 2010, etc.), a former columnist for the London Sunday Times Magazine and contributor to other journals, grew up in a Manhattan penthouse with her mother, a poet whose narcissism, unpredictable mood swings, and physical abuse the author recounts in repetitive detail. At times “slapped, punched, kicked, pinched, and attacked,” subjected to hysterical tirades alternating with suffocating demonstrations of love, Leve felt abandoned, betrayed, and continually threatened, as if she were stranded “in the pit of a crevasse, with a rope to safety just inches away and out of reach.” Some measure of safety came during visits to her adored father, who lived in Thailand and whom Leve portrays as flawless; from her father’s former girlfriend, whose nurturing attention brought a bit of stability to Leve’s life in New York; and from a succession of caretakers, many of whom fled from her mother’s employ. One woman quit or was fired multiple times over the course of 12 years. By her mid-40s, Leve still felt indelibly wounded and oppressed by the past. “You understand these things and you’re in control of your life,” her father remarks. “Why can’t you beat those demons and destroy them?” Overcoming the demons, however, proved complicated: Leve learned that childhood stress and abuse caused "pathological changes to brain chemistry,” making her “hypervigilant” and “highly reactive to perceived threats.” Desperate for help, she decided to undergo eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, designed to treat PTSD. Two years later, she was living with her Italian lover and his daughters in Bali, finally feeling central to a family. Though still beset by memories, she was also buoyed by “endorphins of hope” that she finally would be able to “outrace the past.”
A candid rendering of pain and survival.Pub Date: June 14, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-226945-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 26, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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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