A magnetic collection of real stories that sheds a new light on life in the Midwest.
An aspiring creative struggles with his identity.
In his second memoir, Poole (Where’s My Wand?: One Boy’s Magical Triumph over Alienation and Shag Carpeting, 2010) describes the hardships he faced as a Christian teenager living in suburban St. Louis. Both self-conscious and feeling like an outsider, the author did not fit into the standard idea of a straight male high school experience. A talented trumpet player, Poole begins his memoir by recounting his disastrous first sexual encounter with a girl, a memorably recounted event that occurred at an illicit, alcohol-drenched party he had to bribe his way into. In this Donna Summer–infused world, the author and his adolescent cohorts were being tested by the changing sociocultural environment. Confident that he was destined to become a star, Poole made it through high school and college with a few hiccups and countless girlfriends. But nothing really seemed to stick—until he met Kurt, a gay man with whom he formed a meaningful connection. Kurt was convinced Poole was gay and openly shared his opinions as often as possible. The author traces his journey through his confusing adolescence and professional forays in travel and advertising agencies, maps out the gay scene in 1980s St. Louis, and provides crucial insight on the difficulties of coming out within an intolerant societal infrastructure as well as a religious family. Refreshingly, this is not a traditional coming-out story. While many such memoirs capitalize on the author’s sexuality, Poole instead focuses on the creation of his entire identity. Sex is merely a component, not a defining factor. Punctuated with highly effective humor, this book could easily serve as a resource for any closeted individuals looking to read another success story.
A magnetic collection of real stories that sheds a new light on life in the Midwest.Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-948122-04-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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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