A plodding, shallow account of a year in the Christian life.
Harvard grad and social activist Breyer’s tale of her first year at an Episcopal seminary in New York City fails to illuminate.
Stringing together a series of disparate anecdotes about seminary life, the author never gets around to providing a coherent overview or deeper understanding. In one potentially fascinating scene, Breyer describes attending a retreat in Connecticut at which a Father Stephen tells the future ministers that popular culture today offers a confusing and ambiguous message about what priesthood is supposed to be. Instead of following up with her own thoughts on the nature of priesthood in the 21st century, the author digresses into an unrelated tale about a tragedy that struck Father Stephen’s parish. Similarly, Breyer notes that, in January, many of her classmates report experiencing a sort of culture shock during Christmas break, finding it difficult to leave the seminary cocoon and attend their parents’ churches. This presents an obvious opportunity to consider the relationship between a calling to ordained ministry and the rest of one’s life, but Breyer ignores it. Readers are left to wonder how her Jewish dad (Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer) reacted to her call to ordination and, more broadly, how wearing a dog collar affects everyday conversation and interactions with strangers. Breyer’s treatment of her commitment to social justice is equally disappointing; she describes getting arrested at an Episcopal Day protest, but doesn’t elaborate on why she participated or how she felt about incarceration. The sacrament of marriage gets short shrift too. Breyer arrives at seminary fresh from her honeymoon, but says nothing about her marriage as a spiritual journey. She hints that her husband does not share her enthusiasm for Christianity, but never tells us how spirituality affects their relationship, or vice versa. The closest she comes is her admission that Greg gets annoyed when she opts for studying over cleaning up the kitchen.
A plodding, shallow account of a year in the Christian life.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-465-00714-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2000
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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