Scarboro’s writing is marked by honesty, and although a new love appears for the young widow at the end, there’s no doubt of...
A poignant memoir that first appeared as a thoughtful essay in the “Modern Love” column of the New York Times.
In that essay, Scarboro (Phoenix, Upside Down, 1996, etc.), a happily married mother of two, had been informed by a university that it was holding a vial of frozen sperm from her deceased first husband, Stephen—what did she want done with it? The memoir that grew out of her essay is a frank account of her love for and her young marriage to Stephen, who, having been born with cystic fibrosis, had a life expectancy of 30. He made it, but barely. Scarboro writes about the vacations, the camping out and the hiking, as well as the emergency room visits and hospital stays, the surgical procedures, the feeding tube, his addiction to painkilling drugs and her bout with depression. When Stephen had a double-lung transplant, the 30 medications needed to keep him alive required sorting and storing in a large tackle box. The effect of all the medications was dramatic and disheartening. He developed food cravings, gained 50 pounds and shopped impulsively, and his thoughts, writing and words became rambles. Stephen kept a journal during this time, as they were planning to write a book together about living with cystic fibrosis; she includes a single excerpt that records his perception of these changes. Death was hovering over their young lives, but sometimes it was pushed to the background, letting them imagine a future in which they’d live into their 80s.
Scarboro’s writing is marked by honesty, and although a new love appears for the young widow at the end, there’s no doubt of the warmth of her love for Stephen in the years they had together.Pub Date: April 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-87140-338-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
