A tender and pragmatic immersion into the bewildering depths of a terrifying illness.
Diagnosed at age 40 with a rare form of cancer, a writer and mother recounts the medical, familial and personal challenges of facing a life-threatening condition.
While some authors face their situation with an arsenal of rage and dark, pointed humor—see Katherine Russell Rich’s The Red Devil (1999)—debut author Host writes about her illness with the nuanced grace of a poet whose perspective extends beyond her own experience, including the anguish of watching her family navigate immense upheaval as she struggles to overcome the ravages of carcinoid cancer. The author weaves creative metaphor into her harsh reality, striking a balance between hardship and revelation. The chapters—e.g., “Fear,” “Drought,” “Letting Go”—chronicle the phases of the process, carrying readers through reflections on the past, worries about the future and turmoil of the present while revealing an impressive generosity of spirit and surprisingly minimal anger. In “Forgiveness,” the author equates that sentiment with “finding the right lid for a jar. It is not complicated, but it is satisfying.” Host affirms the importance of nurturing relationships—with kids, siblings, parents and friends—and the gifts to be found in letting others take over. In a narrative that is anchored by humility and gentle counsel, the author mines nuggets of hope and rapture from wrenching circumstances, only occasionally falling victim to purple prose.
A tender and pragmatic immersion into the bewildering depths of a terrifying illness.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-373-89214-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harlequin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2009
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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