Harrowing.
A highly personal and deeply discomforting memoir of neglect and abuse.
Kuts grew up never knowing want; her parents provided for every need, lavishing her with toys and encouraging her interest in art. But not all was as it seemed; behind closed doors, Kuts’ mother disciplined her with harsh spankings that evolved into beatings. After her parents’ divorce, Kuts’ home life unraveled—the kitchen cupboards went barren, her clothes became threadbare and, most devastatingly, her mother lost interest in parenting. By the age of 12, when the memoir begins, the author is starving, routinely panhandling and stealing from neighbors to quiet her hunger. The home she shares with her brother and neglectful mother, who has taken up inappropriate relationships with teenage boys, is no refuge—parties rage at all hours and drug use is rampant. Kuts battles addiction, survives sexual assault and defends herself against torment, both psychological and physical, at the hands of her mother. The narrative follows the family as it moves from California to Oregon, where Kuts finds herself in an even worse predicament. The extent of the neglect, as well as the horrific depictions of starvation, is almost unfathomable and the description of her abuse is heartbreaking. The fact that Kuts grew from a nearly illiterate child to an accomplished wordsmith in just a dozen year attests to her resilience. She is still very close to her story; though she tells it from a distance of decades, her pain still feels fresh. The meandering book runs long (and remains unfinished—a sequel, Please Don’t Love Me, is to pick up where this book ends), and the real question—why Kuts’ mother turned into a monster—is never resolved. But the book succeeds as therapy for its author—and a reminder to its readers to value the simple things, like shelter, sustenance and familial love.
Harrowing.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-1438212197
Page Count: 354
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2011
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
PERSPECTIVES
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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