Next book

SONGS OF THE GORILLA NATION

MY JOURNEY THROUGH AUTISM

Still, this opens a window into the world of autism to provide an unforgettable view.

Revealing first-person account of what it is like to live with Asperger syndrome.

Although Prince-Hughes eventually managed to earn a Ph.D. despite her socially crippling disorder (a form of autism), she had a disastrous early life. She dropped out of high school and lived on the street, later earning her living as an exotic dancer. She attributes the turnaround in her life to the gorillas at Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. Unable to communicate or connect in any meaningful way with humans, the author began spending hours at the zoo silently watching a family of gorillas, closely observing their ways and their relationships with each other. She developed deep empathy with these primates, referred to here as “gorilla people” because in her view they fulfill all the criteria for personhood, serving as models of gentle care, protectiveness, acceptance, and love. Human emotions, long inexplicable to Prince-Hughes, became more understandable; she learned to relax in social situations and gradually had more success in human encounters. After a while she was hired by the zoo and resumed her education, eventually earning a doctorate in interdisciplinary anthropology. The author’s affinity with gorillas was great, and she came to see herself as a bridge between gorilla people and human people as well as between autistic people and normal people. By the end of her memoir, she has formed a loving relationship with another woman and together they are raising a son. Lest the reader assume that her Asperger syndrome has been vanquished, Prince-Hughes includes an epilogue detailing the huge difficulties that it still presents in her daily life. In a generally excellent debut, some of the author’s claims strain credulity: not all readers will believe that both she and her son recall the experience of being born, that she can understand the speech of a bonobo chimp, or that the gorilla Koko has recognized her as a fellow gorilla.

Still, this opens a window into the world of autism to provide an unforgettable view.

Pub Date: March 9, 2004

ISBN: 1-4000-5058-8

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Harmony

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2004

Next book

NIGHT

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. 

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. 

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 62


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


Google Rating

  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating

  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2016


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • Pulitzer Prize Finalist

Next book

WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 62


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


Google Rating

  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating
  • google rating

  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2016


  • New York Times Bestseller


  • Pulitzer Prize Finalist

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

Close Quickview