by David Watts ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 15, 2009
Often illuminating, though the more elaborate passages may strike some as showing off.
Lyrical riffs on illness, frailty and the meaning of life, as seen through a physician’s eyes.
A poet, musician and teacher who also practices medicine, Watts (Bedside Manners: One Doctor’s Reflections on the Oddly Intimate Encounters Between Patient and Healer, 2005, etc.) belongs to the growing ranks of doctor-essayists. Readers should not expect lucid journalistic analyses à la Jerome Groopman or Atul Gawande, however; Watts’s approach is intensely literary. In one of the essays, the author discusses a patient whose cancer was so advanced by the time of its diagnosis that he was too ill to be treated, despite his intense desire for treatment; finally, the author administered a placebo. Another patient suffered a painful chronic illness, but was also needy and wildly psychotic. Watts recorded their exchanges, as well as the interminable, incoherent messages she left on his answering machine. Employing stream-of-consciousness imagery to depict how a teaching hospital’s routine turned a woman’s delivery into a miserable experience, the author intersperses a few of his poems. At times, Watts turns up insightful observations on his profession. Though there was no subpoena appended to a letter requesting information on a patient who died two years earlier, Watts worried, “Doctors motor along with a little fear of litigation in the sidecar.” He observed the patient’s chart and mused that it represented all that remained of a human being. When a confused patient heard from the author that she didn’t require surgery, but a second opinion from a specialist seemed to urge it, Watts explained that she had actually received similar advice filtered through the personalities of two different physicians.
Often illuminating, though the more elaborate passages may strike some as showing off.Pub Date: April 15, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-58729-800-4
Page Count: 206
Publisher: Univ. of Iowa
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2009
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by David Watts
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson
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by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis
by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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