Unapologetically laudatory and ultimately dull.
Each of the five Gronkowski siblings gets a chance to run the ball up the middle in this tepid profile of an exceptional American family that has so far managed to send three of its sons to the NFL.
Gordie Jr., Dan, Chris, Rob and Goose weren’t like other kids growing up in rural New York State. For one thing, they were significantly bigger than everyone else. They were also driven to obsessively hone their physical gifts, spending thousands of hours in their basement gymnasium bulking up and beating the tar out of each other. But such were the rites of passage that helped define much of this colorful, sports-loving clan. Papa Gronkowski—a terrific player in his own right who later went on to found his own fitness supply company—instilled the hard-nosed dedication in each of his boys as they took turns chasing down the dream of becoming professional athletes. Three have already made it, a fourth came awfully close, and a fifth is coming on strong. That, however, is pretty much the extent of what readers will learn about the Gronkowski family dynamic. They worked hard, supported each other and never quit. End of story. Mother Gronkowski, for instance, barely earns a mention, even though what life must have been like for the only female member of such a rambunctious family unit surely seems like fertile ground for real exploration. Bland quotes from friends and neighbors down through the years add little to the family portrait and do even less to differentiate one Gronkowski from the next. “He blossomed into the person he became. He has a great sense of humor”—that’s about as penetrating as this breezy sports biography dares to get.
Unapologetically laudatory and ultimately dull.Pub Date: July 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-544-12668-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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