An entertaining but too predictable tale.
A handsome prince turns into an ogre in a memoir that reads like a fairy tale.
When she was 27, novelist and memoirist Trussoni (Angelopolis, 2013, etc.), married with a 1-year-old son, met Nikolai, a mesmerizing Bulgarian “with an aura of invincibility about him.” As she confesses, “I was a woman ready to be swept away.” Nikolai, she told her dismayed husband, was “a magician who would make all my dreams come true.” At first blinded by his exoticism, Trussoni gradually realized that Nikolai was no hero, although he was so mired in superstition (evil eyes, mantras, and hexes) that he fit the description of a magician. Their marriage began to fall apart, and after 8 years and the failure of couples therapy, the author decided they must move “far away from everything—far from successes and troubles,” to a village in the south of France, where, she hoped, they could protect their “fragile love.” Installed in a medieval fortress, Nikolai became increasingly moody, withdrawn, and erratic. A friend, who plied him with herbal remedies, suggested a weekend getaway. When that turned sour, Trussoni decided to stage an elaborate renewal ceremony, but Nikolai had a near-breakdown during the ritual. The author devotes much of the narrative to reconstructing Nikolai’s long rants, but she offers little insight about her own insecurities and delusions. She consulted an astrologer, who told her that her soul yearned for “authentic love,” which would require “growing through hell.” Enter a gorgeous young Frenchman, with whom Trussoni began an affair, inciting Nikolai to desperate measures. The author is an engaging storyteller, but her memoir is weakened by clichés (a resident ghost, the princess locked in the castle) and stock characters, including a fairy godmother (her lover’s chic mother) who rescued her. Back in the United States, Trussoni eventually came to the trite conclusion that she could not sustain a relationship until she learned how “to be a singular person” who could be “happy alone first.”
An entertaining but too predictable tale.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-245900-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
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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