A short but telling reminder to live life well and leave heartfelt memories.
In this debut memoir, a doctor and devoted aunt commemorates her nephew and recounts his battle against leukemia.
Patel’s nephew Rakesh was an American Hindu of Indian descent. He was studying business communication and technology at the University of Houston when, in December 2011, he was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. He fought the cancer throughout 2012 and into 2013; then, while in remission, he completed his bachelor’s degree in business administration. In 2014, inspired by the physician assistants who helped him through his treatment, Rakesh began studying to become one himself. But the cancer returned, and in December 2014, he died. He was 23 years old. Throughout his short life—and particularly during the ordeal of his illness—Rakesh impressed those around him with his positive outlook and regard for others. Like many cancer sufferers, he chose to remain upbeat. Even while in the hospital, he continued to mentor his university dance team. While he was very ill in October 2014, his determination and love for his family saw him attend his brother’s wedding, both driving the groom to the ceremony and delivering the best man’s speech. Rakesh even took heart from his cancer’s acronym and turned it into reassurance for others, tweeting: “ALL is well, lol.” Unsurprisingly, Patel writes from a very personal place, sharing memories of Rakesh and her own emotional responses to his triumphs, setbacks, and everyday endurance. As a doctor at a neonatal intensive care unit, she is well-placed to understand the medical procedures, yet the sanguine memoir doesn’t stray too far into this territory. For the most part, it chronicles the impact that Rakesh had on those around him. (The letters to Rakesh from his young nieces after his death are especially moving.) The author does not always make allowances for readers unfamiliar with Rakesh or with Indian and Hindu culture. Some of the references are therefore disorienting, yet not in a negative way. The wider effect is that Rakesh, with his loving friends and family, brings his culture and beliefs closer to those who may not share them. This seems a fitting legacy for a young man whose counsel to others was: “Don’t worry about anything. Just dance.”
A short but telling reminder to live life well and leave heartfelt memories.Pub Date: June 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4907-8949-1
Page Count: 108
Publisher: Trafford
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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