Best read in short spurts with a stiff drink in hand, this book is an amusing look at depression that could inspire a...
A comedian's humorous take on depression.
Beginning with babyhood and progressing through to a semimature adulthood, stand-up comic Novak whacks depression left and right, giving it a steady beating as she wallows in her own depressive state. "This book is your chance to lean into your depression,” she writes, “to firm up the depressed habits you already possess, while adding a wonderful array of freshly disturbing, unpleasant symptoms and behaviors to your repertoire—a richer variety of grays to your already gray landscape." The author leads by example, digging deeply into her own depressed life and laying bare various bits of personal trivia, problems, and issues that definitely pinpoint her as a "depresso." Novak relates such childhood stories as refusing to produce a urine sample for the doctor or how upset she was when she could no longer hunt for Easter eggs. She discusses how her one-night stands and drug usage helped her get through college, how a healthy relationship was beyond her control, and how she managed to survive a job in a corporate world, where she mastered avoidance techniques that she continues to use. Taken in small doses, Novak's tongue-in-cheek bantering is funny; read too much, however, and you'll feel overloaded, as the single refrain of depression becomes excessive and overworked. Bathroom humor also is prevalent, and the author divulges too many details about the colonics she used to combat her belly fat. For those seeking quick hits of depressive humor, Novak provides ample lists pinpointing a variety of topics: top nine birthday presents for the child depressive-in-training, ways to avoid charming your therapist, and top four tips for crying in a restaurant.
Best read in short spurts with a stiff drink in hand, this book is an amusing look at depression that could inspire a depressed person to rejoin society.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3970-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Three Rivers/Crown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
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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