An important perspective on the challenges of the American justice system, but it may leave some readers wanting more.
A Saudi Arabian man’s first journey to the United States becomes a legal nightmare in Mohandis’ debut novel, based on his real-life experiences.
“I wish you wouldn’t go to the United States,” warns the narrator’s father when he learns that his job will soon take him from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to Boston. “The situations there are neither smooth nor settled.” The year is 2003, and his father’s concern stems from America’s heightened security measures following the 9/11 attacks. Despite this, the narrator dismisses both his family’s concerns and his own anxieties before boarding the long flight. Unfortunately, his landing in Boston is just the beginning of a long ordeal within the American legal system. He describes the arduous process of clearing customs with a Saudi passport, finally arriving at the final checkpoint, where a customs officer finds suspicious, penlike containers in his backpack. From there, the narrator’s experience with U.S. bureaucracy goes from annoying to Kafkaesque. Unable to explain where the containers came from, he’s arrested for taking explosives on a plane and intentionally providing wrong information. He never gives or gets a clear answer as to how the explosives ended up in his backpack; he only describes his experience as a suspected terrorist. This isn’t a sensationalized story of torture; instead, it focuses on the tediousness of the legal process and the nature of interrogators, whom the narrator describes as behaving “like mean wolves.” As interesting as the subject matter is, however, Mohandis’ narration and dialogue can be overly static and formal. He also focuses most of the book’s energy and detail on the buildup to the narrator’s arrest, leaving the events of his incarceration and trial feeling brief and skimmed-over. The book is most powerful when the narrator lets his emotions shine through, such as when he imagines an impassioned letter he wishes to write to the president or gives a final summation of his time spent in America: “I was disconnected from the world for almost two months in a country that makes and fabricates the news.”
An important perspective on the challenges of the American justice system, but it may leave some readers wanting more.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2014
ISBN: 978-1482828467
Page Count: 184
Publisher: PartridgeSingapore
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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