A coming-of-age drama captured through poetic prose and convincing honesty.
A modeling industry trailblazer and former Olympic swimmer recounts her troubled girlhood.
In her debut, Legler passionately relives her years in Europe and stateside. She was born to expatriate American parents who, despite a disintegrating marriage, struggled to raise her and her siblings. Restless and lonely, the uncommonly tall girl found solace and purpose in swimming. She quickly developed great skill and dexterity, which positioned her for greatness as her strength and determination grew with regular training sessions. The author swam competitively in her early teens as she navigated simmering hormones, smitten boys, and the abusive, predatory physician treating her scoliosis. Legler’s lyrically descriptive prose glides across childhood anecdotes of her first swimming attempt as well as awkward sexual interludes as she strained to discover her identity and a place of her own among her classmates. She shows the precarious balancing act that ensued between her rigorous training sessions at the pool and the soft-core rebellion of teenage life and the struggle to fit in: “I have a swim meet the next day but I’ll get drunk anyway so that I can crawl on the couch with the rest of them. And I do. And it feels good. And I am beautiful.” The author also began to embrace the first sparks of attraction to other girls while exploring her desires with men. Then she shifted her focus to qualifying for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. She intricately describes every nuance of the competitive experience alongside her personal self-discovery and experimentation with sex, alcohol, and procuring drugs for her fellow teammates. Legler decorates each of her adventures with urgency and lively, only occasionally strained poetic expression. Readers familiar with the author know she has grown past the dark days described in this memoir to become a unique fashion model, social justice activist, and successful entrepreneur. This focused attention on her youthful turmoil represents a significant need for blissful catharsis.
A coming-of-age drama captured through poetic prose and convincing honesty.Pub Date: July 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-3575-0
Page Count: 174
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
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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