An amusing stand-up bit buckles under the weight of a book-length treatment.
A successful comedian tries to square gender stereotypes with the realities of how women really live.
Shlesinger, a winner of NBC’s Last Comic Standing, calls her debut book a celebration of womanhood, though her own life and stand-up routine have hardly been paragons of feminist resistance. She locates her moment of awakening in a 2015 episode in which a male comic mocked a fellow female comic. Emboldened to seek equality, she sets out to define and deconstruct the “have-it-all” mentality forced on American women, the obsession to have the perfect partner, profession, and physique. However, despite her profession and stated goal to increase empathy, the author’s recent realizations are neither especially funny nor noteworthy. Shlesinger leans on hackneyed clichés, such as dissecting the so-called guys’ girl, only to reveal she once hid behind the stereotype of the sports-loving, beer-drinking woman. A handful of the anecdotes about dating and workplace drama are humorous, but most rely on the dated conventions the author supposedly seeks to abolish. Some profanity-laden diatribes come dangerously close to being offensive for their lack of nuance about race and sexual orientation. The takeaway messages of the book are important: cultivate confidence, develop the courage to be different, refuse catty competition with other women. Unfortunately, the intended lessons are often lost in the author’s frenetic chatter—e.g., an entire chapter describing how women should text men—and memoir-style meanderings through her childhood and adolescence, many of which lack resolution. In a handbook seemingly meant for teens, the faux adolescent tone feels forced and obscures what could be an empowering message about how it is never too late to counter the reductive nature of stereotypes. Instead of instructions for how to grow up, this reads like a series of theories not yet fully formed.
An amusing stand-up bit buckles under the weight of a book-length treatment.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-60286-323-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Weinstein Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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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