An enjoyable, moving read about the pleasure of being just a little bit different.
A memoir about a free-spirited young woman who, together with her quirky family, prepares for her grandmother’s death.
Debut author Neal tells the story of her large, unique and oft-reconstituted family that suffered through “three generations of failed marriages.” Shortly after the book begins, Buffi is called to the bedside of her grandmother Mopsie, a woman considered by her offspring to be both an uber-matriarch and dark mystery. Buffi’s unnamed mother assures her that unlike the many other near-death moments Mopsie has endured during her time in hospice, this time, Mopsie is really dying. But she’s not: After an overnight scare, Mopsie miraculously recovers yet again. The closer-than-usual brush with death reminds all of Mopsie’s grandchildren that they ought to be visiting her in hospice more frequently. As a result, readers see Buffi spending time with her siblings, especially her excommunicated brother, David, and even her persistently antagonizing mother. Buffi and her family pass many hours reminiscing and sorting through Mopsie’s belongings, and Neal’s straightforward, richly detailed prose offers a cornucopia of family memories painting a vibrant picture of Buffi’s childhood. With both insight and humor, Neal describes many of her family’s offbeat experiences, such as living with their Christian mother on an Israeli kibbutz, her mother’s affair with a married man and her sister’s kidnapping by Mopsie. Buffi concludes that Mopsie’s stubborn refusal to die must be a sign of unfinished business on this Earth. Although at moments the book reads more like a personal tribute to her family and less like a factual work meant for the public, Neal’s affection for her family is so palpable it nearly jumps off the page. Readers will find themselves hoping Buffi will finally discover her distinctive place in this family she so clearly adores.
An enjoyable, moving read about the pleasure of being just a little bit different.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2012
ISBN: 978-1451591019
Page Count: 198
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 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.
