Nothing new for an overflowing table.
A wholly unnecessary retelling of the Fab Four’s story, from an author who fails to add anything that seasoned Beatles fanatics don’t already know.
Writer, actor and radio-show host Giuliano (Dark Horse, 1991, etc.) adds to his Beatles oeuvre (a second volume on Harrison is already in the works) with this basic runthrough of the highs and lows the four members of the Beatles collectively and individually endured; he is aided by his daughter Avalon. They begin with a dedication to the founder of the Hare Krishna movement, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, which immediately brings to mind the most spiritual member of the Beatles, George Harrison. Indeed, the authors conclude with a touching tribute to Harrison, whose death is among the most recent events they cover. Unfortunately, they also include an ill-timed eulogy to Paul McCartney’s post-Linda marriage to former model Heather Mills, which is being dissolved just as Giuliano’s book reaches publication. The few scraps of new information presented emanate from Giuliano’s connection to George Harrison, but he fails to adequately explain his relationship with the former Beatle. There is a hint that Giuliano and Harrison bonded over spirituality: The dedication to the Swami offers a clue, as does an e-mail sent to Giuliano from a Krishna monk who met Harrison shortly before his death. But Giuliano’s insufficient clarification spoils what could have been an interesting addendum to a perfunctory retrospective, making this a needless addition to the welter of literature on a band whose magic is buckling under the weight of over-familiarity.
Nothing new for an overflowing table.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2006
ISBN: 1-84454-160-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: John Blake/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2006
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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