An eloquent, poignant memoir.
An acclaimed food writer and memoirist’s account of the codependent relationship she had with her charming and outrageous—but also very difficult—mother.
Altman (Treyf: My Life as an Unorthodox Outlaw, 2016, etc.) was raised by a beautiful Manhattan singer named Rita. Obsessed with makeup, clothes, and her youthful brush with fame, Rita was both narcissistic and overwhelming. Rather than accept her daughter as a girl who loved to wear suits and had no interest in the world of celebrity, Rita attempted to remake her in her own glamorous image, with results that were as humorous as they were painful. Indeed, the only time Rita would show her daughter the approval for which she hungered was when Altman dressed fashionably and flaunted her body. Deeply attached to each other but prone to endless fighting, Altman and her mother became each other’s “intoxicant of choice” until the author finally moved from New York to New England to live with and then marry a woman named Susan. Over the next two decades, the author built a quiet, independent life apart from her mother, allowing her the space to forge her own identity. Yet she still connected with Rita daily by telephone and watched her spend money—which Altman quietly replaced—on the expensive makeup her girlish heart desired rather than the health care her aging body required. Then Rita suffered a debilitating fall that left her unable to “use the bathroom, organize her pills, or navigate her space in a wheelchair.” Altman suddenly realized that, like it or not, the mother from whom she had struggled to break free and who she once thought was “unbreakable [and] unstoppable” was now totally dependent on her. Funny, raw, and tender, Altman’s book examines the inevitable role reversals that occur in parent-child relationships while laying bare a mother-daughter relationship that is both entertaining and excruciating.
An eloquent, poignant memoir.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-399-18158-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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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