One man’s appreciation for curious experiences, portrayed with self-effacing wit; best suited for fans of the author’s work.
An acclaimed novelist’s cross-country, “Great American Book Tour,” woven with quaint recollections of teaching in northern Vermont as well as enthusiasm for trout fishing.
Following radiation treatment for cancer, the then-65-year-old Mosher (Walking to Gatlinburg, 2010, etc.) embarked on a road trip inspired by a childhood promise that also coincided with the publication of a new novel. Forays in cities included stops at notable independent bookshops, from Prairie Lights to Powell’s; near-escapes with wildlife; anecdotal encounters with Oliver Sacks as well as Harry Potter fans; musings on landscapes; and conversations with locals characterized by humorous, occasionally larger-than-life traits. In three sections (“Faith,” “Hope” and “Love”), Mosher threads the uncertainty of his pre-novelist days with the foibles of now being an accomplished yet realistic, humble author. Rather than presenting a linear career story, he refreshingly alternates chapters between past and present. With equal aplomb, Mosher also looks back at challenges such as moving a piano, raucous motel patrons, rest-stop brawlers, limited audiences that included only the staff that organized the event and being mistaken for homeless. He also skillfully highlights memories that emphasize neighborly relationships. Chapters on Vermont are noteworthy for the recurrent theme of discovering simpler pleasures and searching for stories amid colorful lives. Fleeting conversations with imaginary characters may strike some readers as overly whimsical, and the digressive story about an inheritance is distracting. Still, Mosher provides a genial reminder that adventures are possible at any age.
One man’s appreciation for curious experiences, portrayed with self-effacing wit; best suited for fans of the author’s work.Pub Date: March 6, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-45069-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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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