Classier than the usual tell-all: an honest account of a personal pilgrimage through privileged self-destruction.
A rare and worthy first-person glimpse into the pitfalls of being a Kennedy, complete with instructions on how to step into the deepest hole available, from the son of Patricia Kennedy and actor Peter Lawford.
“I was given wealth, power, and fame when I drew my first breath. Now what?” asks Lawford, admitting that he “failed to take advantage of any of them.” The “what” was booze and drugs in quantities that would make even the most hardened liver quail. But you could hardly blame him. Here was a guy whose first stop before being brought home from the hospital was a bar so his parents could grab a drink (they’d already had a few while still in the hospital, of course). Lawford’s memoir zeroes in on his shabby, feckless behavior until he was in his 30s, but it can’t help revealing all sorts of minutiae of the kind craved by Kennedy-watchers. The story covers his mother’s proprietary relationship with her family; the divorce that threw him in among his maternal relatives; life with Uncle Bobby; the daily protocols of Hyannis Port; what it meant to suffer the wrath of Big E (Ethel); how it felt to have family members murdered while the rest of the world described the deaths as assassinations. In a natural, jazzy voice, Lawford describes his years of “better living through chemistry,” which beveled the edges of neglect and failed expectations until it became the 800-pound gorilla riding his back, queering his prospects and turning his life to trash amidst the grandeur. It wasn’t easy for Lawford to get straight; consequences included alienation, divorce and crying children—the same things his parents had inflicted on him.
Classier than the usual tell-all: an honest account of a personal pilgrimage through privileged self-destruction.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-073248-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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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