A potently rendered chronicle of rape and the clarity and closure achieved even when justice is only partially served.
The story of a Pennsylvania serial rapist who stood trial two decades after his assault on the author.
Mystery writer Winslow (The Red House, 2015) was a religiously chaste junior studying acting at Carnegie Mellon University in 1992 when she was violently raped in her apartment by Arthur Fryar. Police had few clues and little DNA to compare to the author’s forensic evidence, so the investigation stagnated—though the victim prodded the revolving team of detectives to continue sleuthing throughout the ensuing years. Winslow arrestingly depicts the rape and its harrowing physical and psychological fallouts as well as the undermining effects on her adult life as she struggled to connect emotionally and romantically with men. Though Fryar attacked another girl later that same year, his DNA only entered the criminal justice network after a drug arrest in 2002. After constant prodding, cold case rape kit DNA was reintroduced into the system, and matches were found to provide sufficient evidence to prosecute Fryar in 2013, but Winslow’s case remained unattributed to him. Her adult life as a married mother of two and an American expatriate living in “polite and formal and circumspect” Cambridge, England, was refocused on obsessively investigating Fryar herself and unearthing enough sound, actionable ties linking him to her assault. Winslow doggedly uncovered more about her rapist and prepared for a media-hyped trial with the aid of persistent investigators. Despite legal red tape—including Pennsylvania’s statute of limitation laws, which can only be overturned with DNA evidence—Fryar emerged as the smug prime suspect. Urgently written with forthright prose, the memoir’s serpentine suspense elements resemble the plot points seen in the kind of crime fiction the author writes herself. She doesn’t skimp on the intimate details of the intimidating court case or the mettle necessary to endure what proved to be a winding, mentally challenging, and ultimately disappointing journey toward retribution.
A potently rendered chronicle of rape and the clarity and closure achieved even when justice is only partially served.Pub Date: May 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-243480-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
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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