Many well-written insights into how one captivating man’s mind works.
A South African priest recalls his experiences under apartheid while also highlighting his progressive views on diverse issues.
With his privileged upbringing, which included a stint at the exclusive English school Harrow, Yeats (Veritatis Splendor, 1995) could have easily slipped into a quiet, fulfilling life as a priest. Being quiet clearly never appealed to him, as he vividly illustrates here, though there’s no question that he found great fulfillment. In this memoir, Yeats slowly allows his remarkable life story to unfold while peppering the text with his closely held beliefs. As he recalls the events that led to his imprisonment in South Africa, which included an unexpected moment of prayer with the arresting officers just before they whisked him off to jail, Yeats also introduces us to his worldview, decidedly radical for a man of the church. Sex is not just for procreation, but something to be enjoyed by everyone, he believes, neatly weaving this conviction into the narrative by recalling his nascent fumblings with future wife Alison, the love of his life. (He also offers some interesting thoughts on homosexuality, both in society and within the Catholic Church.) The majority of these pages, however, concern his incarceration at the hands of the South African authorities for refusing to perform military service during the country’s apartheid era. Even here, Yeats is full of surprises, seemingly preferring the time he spent in solitary confinement to his tenure at Pretoria Central Prison, where he encountered some colorful and hair-raising characters. Yeats also examines societal changes in post-apartheid South Africa before concluding with a summation of his unique interpretation of Christian values.
Many well-written insights into how one captivating man’s mind works.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-84604-001-9
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Rider/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 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
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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