Far from compelling.
A disjointed memoir of a descent into mental illness and an eventual return and emergence as a professor of literature.
Hebald (Three Blind Mice, 1989) here maps out her journey through a variety of mental institutions in her quest for a cure to her suicidal tendencies and general misery. Not surprisingly, it stems from her childhood: abusive mother and sister, incestuous father, complete inability to focus her thoughts in school, encounters with licentious male patrons at the movie theater. Isolated by a lack of social skills, the author conceived a passion for drama and through a combination of talent and force of will got herself into the highly coveted acting classes of Uta Hagen and others. She also acquired a number of older lovers and a series of psychiatrists who prescribed a bewildering variety of drugs for her condition, sometimes diagnosed as schizophrenia. She repeatedly attempted to kill herself, was hospitalized, was misunderstood by her therapists, and finally liberated herself from the treatment cycle when she tossed her medications into the sea. It’s easy to understand the author’s frustration with her doctors. Some urged her to get married (“Mating is an instinct,” one told her), while others advised her to stop acting and get a secretarial job. Nonetheless, despite her wretched tale, our protagonist engenders little sympathy in the reader. Her story is disjointed, her dialogue stilted, and her tone querulous. Hebald should obviously be the star of her own autobiography, but in this case she has crowded every other player off the stage. Her mother and sister, key figures in a turbulent childhood, are mere sketches. Lovers, doctors, and other patients flash by. When one psychiatrist infuriates Hebald by telling her “You’re too intense,” many readers will nod in sympathy—with the doctor.
Far from compelling.Pub Date: May 23, 2001
ISBN: 1-55553-482-1
Page Count: 252
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2001
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
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