Pagans, spiritualists, and other open-minded thinkers will relish this memoir.
A Wiccan practitioner shares 40 years of magic in this memoir.
In a series of vignettes about her experiences and development as a self-described shamanic witch, Fallingstar (White as Bone, Red as Blood: The Storm God, 2011, etc.) draws on themes of spirituality, history, psychology, and also addresses social and political issues. Early chapters tell the story of the author as a young girl, when she says she started to get hints that there was magic in the world and that it was an integral part of her own soul. Readers meet her family, friends, and kindred spirits she met over the years—an eclectic band of companions—as she recounts their shared experiences. Some chapters take a rollicking trip through the 1970s hippie subculture, in which she was an enthusiastic participant; in them, she writes of acid trips (in one, a giant baby gorilla battles with a god that’s “entirely composed of seething, flickering blue fire”) and free love (her ethical code was to “never to sleep with a married man unless I was also sleeping with his wife”). The chapters fly by, as most are only three or four pages long, and Fallingstar’s wry, witty observations are amusing; for example, she likens one Wiccan principle to the no-refund policy at her favorite Chinese restaurant (“When we don’t like what we have ordered from life’s menu, we can’t just send it back”). Readers will find it fun to skip around, which is easy to do, as the author’s story isn’t strictly chronological; the first half is broadly about her childhood and the latter, her development into a Wiccan practitioner. Skeptics will find some portions difficult to accept, such as her accounts of past-life memories of being burned as a witch. However, the book effectively dispels notions that witches are generally motivated by evil, and the author expresses her love of nature, noting that she “always prefer[s] to look for logic, to assume the supernatural is actually just super natural—something in nature we just don’t understand yet.” Her closing words aptly quote the 1970 film Little Big Man: “Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
Pagans, spiritualists, and other open-minded thinkers will relish this memoir.Pub Date: May 12, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-63152-699-2
Page Count: 280
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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