Wrenchingly painful, but intensely affecting.
Novelist Burgess (Exposures, 2005, etc.) expressively and excruciatingly chronicles her emotional struggle when cancer afflicts her husband.
It may seem odd that nearly every scene is infused with aromas, plant life, outdoor atmospherics, colors, food and wine, but this approach is appropriate: From the moment Burgess met and fell in love with Ken Grunzweig in 1988, it was apparent that their shared appreciation of the sensuous pleasures of being human was a central element in their bond. She was 31, really in love for the first time; he was 44 and had endured the gruesome deaths of two wives. Despite these traumas, Ken remained an unusually self-aware, evolved, giving man. The couple continued in thrall to each other as they raised two kids, first in the San Francisco Bay area and then in Spokane, Wash. Fourteen years into their joyful marriage, cancer struck Ken. Narrating the subsequent barrage of medical treatments and uncertainty, Burgess lyrically and perceptively explores how the body, emotions and experiences are connected, how love and misfortune affect that landscape. The author’s strained relationship with her mother, and Ken’s with his adult daughter, further illuminate these inquiries. Describing chemotherapy medicines as “priceless bags of chemical hope” may seem excessive, but Burgess’s romantic prose only rarely seems overwritten. In the context of her attempts to unearth understanding from such a devastating event, the gush of feeling tugs the reader along on a difficult ride during which insight is the only comfort and stabbing inevitability underlies every embrace and home-cooked meal. Burgess self-identifies as a proponent of science over religion, but there is a generous helping of “Spiritual Lite” (the title of one chapter), including a vision of the dead. These forays into the mystical do not go unexamined; the author examines how the idea of “God” helps her and Ken to confront his illness.
Wrenchingly painful, but intensely affecting.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7679-2859-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2008
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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