A sort of how-I-struggled-onto-the-stage story, told with appealing detail and self-deprecation.
A celebrated contemporary playwright and screenwriter rehearses his boyhood, early career, and the stumbles and bumbles of his personal life.
Hare, born in 1947 into a modest English seaside life (his father was an often absent merchant seaman), writes early about the boyhood thrill he felt at getting lost. The thrill seems to have lingered. He would later lose himself in self-doubt, in an extramarital affair with actress Kate Nelligan (an affair that rose, then sank, then rose and sank again), and in attempts to understand the enduring effects his parents’ behavior had on him. Readers who know Hare’s unique stage works will be surprised by the conventional and sturdily chronological nature of his memoir. He begins in boyhood and marches us through his school experiences (he did well and ended up at Cambridge) and his reading habits, declaring proudly, “Even as a child, J.M. Barrie and Lewis Carroll meant nothing to me, and they mean less today….I have been Hobbit-hating from Day One.” He describes as “savage” the social life at prep school and admits he was “a nasty little boy.” Most of his text, though, deals with his early experiences in the theater. He began doing puppet shows, spent some time selling vacuum cleaners door to door (unsuccessfully), and then gave acting a go but soon realized his theatrical talents lay elsewhere. He segued into directing, then writing, and more or less lucked into a position at the Royal Court Theatre, a position that would lead to many projects for him—successes and failures of all sorts. Hare does display a refreshing candor about his screw-ups and even his cruelties, personally and professionally. He also lets fly with some occasional haymakers at theater critics, many of whom he patently considers clueless. Some famous names parade across his proscenium, as well, including Edward Fox, Tom Wilkinson, Tom Stoppard, Peter Hall, and Helen Mirren.
A sort of how-I-struggled-onto-the-stage story, told with appealing detail and self-deprecation.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-393-24918-7
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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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