A soulful account of Western vistas and New Age mantras.
American travel writer Nealson (New Mexico’s Sanctuaries, Retreats, and Sacred Places, 2014, etc.) shares her tales of life on the road in North America and Mexico.
The author and her husband decided to chuck it all and “trade real estate for wheel estate.” So they sold their home, bought a recreational vehicle that they dubbed “Tortuga,” and set out for parts (mostly) unknown. Traveling up and down the West Coast, from British Columbia to Mexico, they visited various friends along the way and made occasional side trips to famous places, such as the Grand Canyon. They also made new friends, buried a pet, had RV trouble, took hikes, and learned that life on the road is not without occasional bumps. The author was soon reminded of some early advice that she received in a chat room when she was first considering the RV life: “You’d better darned well like the person you’re with because you’re going to sit across a small table and look at him every day.” Nealson is a colorful writer, particularly when describing some bit of nature that’s caught her eye or ear, as when she tells of one peaceful morning having “Meadowlark surround-sound.” She can also be quite funny: at one campground in the Southwest, she notes that watching the other RV-ers is like watching her own “personal episode from The Beverly Hillbillies.” She quotes witticisms from George Carlin and Oscar Wilde, as well. However, she’s also prone to using New Age-y jargon, including many references to the “Creatrix,” which may not appeal to every reader. Still, there’s a lot of wisdom here: “Why,” she wonders, “was it some pushed back and others pushed over, content with the status quo?” And she’s certainly no pushover herself: whether she’s facing a mother bear and her cubs or the painful reality that her marriage may be in trouble, she always jumps in with an adventurous spirit and an open heart.
A soulful account of Western vistas and New Age mantras.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4782-9135-0
Page Count: 226
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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