During his journey through online dating, Lauer offered women “the illusion that [they] could understand me,” which he...
The tale of how the author’s wife’s infidelity sent him into the brave new world of Internet dating.
This memoir by Poetry Society of America deputy editor Lauer (A Hotel in Belgium, 2014) proceeds from a phone call he received from a woman who told the author that his wife was having an affair with her husband. Lauer found himself in emotional limbo, apparently more committed to repairing the marital damage than his wife was (she continued the affair), while feeling that the narrative thread of his life was unraveling. There are reasons to suspect he’s an unreliable narrator or that there’s a subtext to this memoir on the unreliability of all memory. The author delivers seemingly offhand disclosures of his neediness and depression, his alcoholism (in recovery), the lack of sex in their marriage, his wife’s request that they seek counseling, and his refusal to get a driver’s license after they moved (at her insistence) from New York to the Bay Area. So there are at least two sides to this story, but in this memoir, she is depicted only as the one who betrayed him. The women with whom he connects on the Internet (after returning to New York) are a series of all-but-anonymous names with whom he was seeking some sort of solace. As he writes to one (addressed “Dear You”), “with the illusion of the connectedness of the Internet I somehow knew you more than a complete stranger. But I guess that is true and not true.” Much of the most emotionally powerful writing here comes in unsent letters to his divorced, alcoholic mother, from whom he’s been estranged since she asked for a drink at his wedding. As for the title, the Missed Connections section on Craigslist suggests the pervasiveness of loneliness and longing and the desperation to connect.
During his journey through online dating, Lauer offered women “the illusion that [they] could understand me,” which he extends to readers as well.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59376-632-0
Page Count: 225
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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
© Copyright 2025 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.
