A portly, respectful biography of the late British conservationist, author, and raconteur. Like his better-known brother, the novelist and travel essayist Lawrence Durrell, Gerald Durrell (1925—95) was born in India and lived in England only under protest: “That mean, shabby little island wrung my guts out of me and tried to destroy anything singular and unique in me,” wrote Lawrence bitterly, and Gerald was inclined to agree. Although he would regard England as his home for most of his life, Gerald Durrell spent as much time as he could away from the island, traveling widely around the world in pursuit of his zoological interests and exploring deserts, savannas, mountains, and jungles far afield. Botting (One Chilly Siberian Morning, 1967) provides a thoroughly documented account of Durrell’s itinerary, charting his development from amateur to professional naturalist whose books, such as My Family and Other Animals, were once widely read. Botting does an especially good job of addressing Durrell’s many contributions to wildlife conservation; among other things, Durrell founded the Jersey Zoo, which helped protect dozens of endangered species, and he advised many governments on programs to protect indigenous animals. For these contributions alone, Botting suggests, Durrell deserves to be remembered today—even while divorcing him, Durrell’s wife was moved to remark, “As a champion of the animal world and a pioneer of animal conservation he was one of the great men of our age, and his immense contribution to the cause is only now beginning to sink in.” But Botting avoids hagiography, and he does offer a capable accounting of other aspects of Durrell’s life as a writer, lecturer, sometime celebrity, and bon vivant. The result is a solid, engaging biography that will appeal to Durrell’s admirers—and perhaps, with good cause, earn him a few more. (24 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7867-0655-4
Page Count: 656
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
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.
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
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
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