An edgy, unflinchingly honest remembrance, and a touching, useful guide to navigating a loved one’s dementia.
Bawmann’s debut memoir traces the course of his late father’s descent into Alzheimer’s disease, and the effects on the rest of family.
It’s an increasingly familiar problem—more people are living longer in the modern era, and many of those who make it to what’s called “old-old age” (85 years or older) will display symptoms of cognitive dysfunction. However, Bawmann’s father, Ronnie, was only 60 when his aberrant behavior became impossible to ignore. He had a history of depression, and was a difficult husband and father, the author says, even before dementia damaged his inner censor. Because of the resulting personality changes, his wife of more than 40 years left him. In early 2005, Bawmann received a call from his father, railing about his wife’s absence: “If she doesn’t come home, I’m going to kill her. I’m going to shoot her, then me.” It was a situation that the author had to manage from 1,000 miles away; he lived in Denver with his wife, son, and daughter, while his dad lived in rural Illinois. For the next few years, Bawmann and his younger brother, who lived in Boston, made frequent trips to deal with increasing crises. For example, in 2011, their father’s fixation on and harassment of an ex-girlfriend repeatedly landed him in court. As a result, he faced jail or commitment to a facility that could handle his illness. Bawmann has culled this memoir from journal entries that he kept during his decade-long ordeal, and it’s as much about the relationships between the various members of his family as it is about keeping his father safe. There’s more humor than one might expect in such a terribly painful and personal story, and the moments of sarcasm in Bawmann’s articulate, jaunty prose keep the pages turning. However, he doesn’t ignore his anguish: “The pain of his reprised toddlerhood is too deep. It can’t be excised from our souls. It haunts us like a nightmare with no end in sight.” Numerous family photos add context, such as the fact that Ronnie owned two different beagles, inspiring the title.
An edgy, unflinchingly honest remembrance, and a touching, useful guide to navigating a loved one’s dementia.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4809-8741-8
Page Count: 278
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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