Loyal fans of the Neville Brothers will likely enjoy this book, disjointed though it is.
A patchwork group autobiography by the noted New Orleans musicians.
Blame it, perhaps, on the recent craze for oral histories: rather than write a straightforward narrative of the Neville Brothers' inarguably influential musical career, as he did with his fine life of Marvin Gaye (Divided Soul, 1985), music journalist David Ritz organizes this text in snippets, with each of the four brothers speaking more or less in turn to document their five decades' work. The brothers are markedly different: Artie, the eldest, has passions for technology, doowop, and science fiction; Charles, the next oldest, is a jazz aficionado; Aaron, an ex-junkie and would-be cowboy, brings a sweet tremulous voice to just about any kind of music that can be made; and Cyril, the baby brother at 51, is a master of polyrhythmic percussion and, in his off time, a voracious reader. To judge by this account, Charles is the great talker of the family, although all the brothers spin out fragmentary, sometimes unfinished stories that touch on old wounds, the costs of fame, the pains of growing up in the segregated South, life in prison (where a couple of the brothers spent time), and (in more detail than one might like) their sexual conquests. On a more upbeat note, the brothers also talk about healing the rifts that once existed between them as they struggled to carve out careers, individually and together. As they talk, the four are clearly aware of their key roles in having introduced zydeco, New Orleans soul, and other regional forms of music to an international audience, but they are generous in showering praise on fellow musicians with whom they've shared stages—among them Dr. John, Ray Charles, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and Linda Ronstadt.
Loyal fans of the Neville Brothers will likely enjoy this book, disjointed though it is.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2000
ISBN: 0-316-73009-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
