A moving exploration of mental health and the efficacy of available treatment.
Lowe (Digging for Dirt: The Life and Death of ODB, 2008) deconstructs her decadeslong battle with bipolar disorder and the drug that brought her sanity—at the cost of her physical health.
Until the day she learned it was slowly destroying her kidney function, lithium was nothing less than the author’s elixir of life, the one thing that could tame the mania that had afflicted an adolescence obsessed with messianic beliefs and the secret location of a tunnel to Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch. Those delusions, in addition to the haunting aftereffects of sexual molestation endured years before, landed Lowe in the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute with a seemingly endless supply of lithium-filled Dixie cups. Initially resistant to medication, she relented and slowly began to recover. “Once it was explained that this was an element in everyone’s body and that I just needed more, the three pink pills in the Dixie cup didn’t seem so bad,” writes the author. Buoyed by lithium’s stabilizing power, the author managed to navigate college and set her sights on a new career as a magazine writer in New York City. With an apartment and an entry-level gig at House & Garden secured, life seemed to be going so well that the idea of tapering off lithium didn’t seem to be far-fetched. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a terrible idea, and Lowe embarked on one of the most self-destructive periods of her life. In analyzing her illness, the author dives deep into not just her personal relationship to lithium, but the experiences of others as well. She chronicles her globe-trotting odyssey of self-discovery to the great salt flats of Bolivia, which contain more than half of the world’s lithium supplies, and beyond. In the end, her often chaotic chronicle operates as an earnest memoir of personal triumph and an illuminating exposé of a type of medication that continues to be a source of great debate.
A moving exploration of mental health and the efficacy of available treatment.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-57449-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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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