Up-and-down, humorous and/or serious essays that run through the gauntlet that comprises life.
The bestselling author of How to Be a Woman (2012) compiles columns on all aspects of life into one giant explosion of thoughts.
Quirky, funny, stupid, serious, compassionate, and thoughtful are just some of the adjectives necessary to describe Moran’s (How to Build a Girl, 2014, etc.) British-centric compilation of essays on just about anything that has happened to her. Want to know her thoughts on cystitis, printers, the 5:2 diet (“wherein the dieter eats perfectly normally for five days of the week—then spends the remaining two days on a very restrictive diet”), the song “Get Lucky,” seven things about fashion every woman should know, or Lena Dunham and Girls? Look no further. Interested in Moran’s take on Margaret Thatcher’s death, bus tour guides, how she learned about sex, or her love for David Bowie? That’s here as well. Fortunately, the author does delve into more than these fluff pieces, addressing tough issues like rape, female genital mutilation, what it means to be a feminist, the body issues women face, immigration, war, terrorism, and the problems with social media, including the ease with which people can harass others online. The tone is satirical, humorous, serious, or snarky, depending on the topic. Some of the commentaries include locker-room humor, which sits awkwardly next to the more significant discussions of important issues. In attempting to address everything and find a common theme, “the same old problems and the same old asshats,” Moran has created a mishmash that leaves readers laughing one minute and begging for more seriousness the next. Her observations on somber topics are the highlights, giving readers a better sense of the compassionate, intelligent woman behind the prose.
Up-and-down, humorous and/or serious essays that run through the gauntlet that comprises life.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-243375-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
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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