A fascinating foray into the way of all flesh.
Death is only the beginning in Schott's Almanac writer and researcher Lovejoy's marvelously macabre chronicle of some of history's most well-traveled cadavers.
Thomas à Becket had it tough in life—having the top of his head lopped off, and all—but the poor guy didn't get much rest in the grave either. Neither did good ’ol St. Nick, Jesse James, Voltaire, Laurence Sterne or any of the other intriguing personalities profiled in this highly satisfying investigation into (real) life after death. While some public figures found their final resting places problematic due to the controversial lives they led, others found their notoriety made their decaying bones valuable sources of prestige for the local municipality. And the good citizens were willing to go to great lengths in order to get their towns on the map, even if it meant digging up famous teeth and skulls. Sometimes the tug of war raged for centuries. Even when they were beyond the reach of politics, celebrity stiffs still had to contend with the nefarious "Resurrection Men." Better known today as grave robbers or body snatchers, these shadowy figures were more than enthusiastic about plundering famous crypts. Lovejoy has a great time relating all their dubious exploits, but the ghoulish behavior is just one aspect of her graveside exploration. Death does strange things to people. In the case of Hunter S. Thompson, it compelled him to have his lifeless body shot out of a cannon to the tune of "Mr. Tambourine Man." Even more profound, Thompson had forged the kinds of relationships in life that would actually make his bizarre death wish become a reality. Somewhere, Thompson is thanking actor Johnny Depp for footing the bill for the cannon. The author invites readers to crack open all these coffins, curl up inside and stare death straight in the eye. The effect is oddly comforting.
A fascinating foray into the way of all flesh.Pub Date: March 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-5498-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 29, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2013
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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