A heartbreaking, inspirational story of perseverance through unbearable circumstances.
Barker’s debut memoir recounts a five-year maelstrom of tragic events that she and her husband endured in their attempts to start a family.
In 1986, after an uncomplicated pregnancy, Barker and her husband were stunned to learn that their newborn had a serious heart condition requiring immediate surgery. Not only that—their tiny daughter, Lauren, also had Down syndrome. Both issues came as a complete shock to the couple, as neither had a family history of genetic problems. Yet this was only the beginning of what Barker aptly describes as a “vicious cycle of misfortune.” Lauren was admitted to a subpar hospital, Barker says, because of their restrictive HMO, and she tells of frequently enduring callous, even negligent care from staff members. There were angels along the way, however—people who provided understanding and key assistance at just the right times. Despite this, the family’s apparent bad luck continued. After surgery for an ectopic pregnancy, Barker discovered that she had contracted hepatitis B, most likely during the procedure, she says. Later, she delivered a healthy baby boy, but the joyous occasion was clouded by Lauren’s upcoming heart operation, which was complicated by infection (also likely the hospital’s fault, the author says) that led to the child’s tragic death. Fate was not yet finished, however: after Barker learned that she was again expecting, a cancerous lump was discovered in her breast. The first doctor instructed her to terminate the pregnancy; appalled, she pursued a second opinion and eventually delivered another strong baby boy. The experiences in this book seem almost too harrowing to be true, yet Barker’s intelligent, clear prose will keep readers grounded. The author writes of events that took place over several decades, which seems to have provided her with the necessary perspective to make sense of a tumultuous time. Readers who might scoff at the author’s consultation of an astrologer will likely change their tunes after she tells of how the traditional medical community repeatedly failed her. When she poignantly declares that “Never again will we take any medical professional’s advice unquestioningly,” it’s food for thought for every reader.
A heartbreaking, inspirational story of perseverance through unbearable circumstances.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63152-810-1
Page Count: 220
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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