A candid, sharply etched self-portrait.
A fiction writer explores the causes, and consequences, of her desire to be perfect.
Tallent (Creative Writing/Stanford Univ.; Mendocino Fire: Stories, 2015, etc.) makes her debut as a memoirist with an intimate examination of her quest for perfection, which has dogged her since childhood. Perfectionism, she writes, “is set apart from other forms of trouble by the inflamed genius of its self-abuse and its pleasurableness.” It tyrannizes her by “dangling before me flawless elizabeths who would transcend limitations lightly, with every hair in place”: a fantasy woman with the power “to intensify, focus, motivate.” To those who do not suffer it, perfectionism can seem like “ambition on steroids,” but Tallent is ever aware of its debilitating effects. Early success as a writer caused her to feel “quickened self-consciousness, elevated standards” that led to an inability to write for more than 20 years. Sentences she created “written in pursuit of transcendence were dull. For the sake of perfection I took a voice, my own, and twisted until mischance and error and experiment were wrung from it, and with them any chance of aliveness.” Seeking the sources of her obsession, Tallent learned that her mother, also a perfectionist, refused to hold her newborn daughter because she saw a scratch near the infant’s eyelid—self-inflicted in utero—that aroused her revulsion. Nineteen when her mother disclosed this, Tallent felt relief at knowing, at last, “a necessary piece of my life.” Besides causing inhibition, self-doubt, mistrust, anxiety, and depression, perfectionism is characterized by self-absorption—“the failure to be interested in things as they are, or people as they are”—a trait that unfortunately focuses the narrative too narrowly on its wounded protagonist. As she portrays herself as a girlfriend, wife, bookstore clerk, analysand, and writing program director, Tallent admits that among her shortcomings was a tendency to judge others harshly “with perfectionist righteousness.” The author’s prose is dense, precise, and often lyrical, but the relentless energy of her long sentences and pageslong paragraphs sometimes feels overwhelming.
A candid, sharply etched self-portrait.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-241037-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
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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