Narrow in scope, this homeless tale still offers a testimonial with undeniable value.
A first-person account explores homelessness in Massachusetts.
Lough opens his debut memoir in 2012 as he faced the prospect of living on the streets for the first time at age 53. The author recounts his trials while he navigated the rules and regulations of several shelters. Each one stipulated a different maximum length of residency and minimum period between stays, which added to the sense of revolving doors. Lough comments: “Compared to the six-day time period at Ally’s and two weeks at the Harvard shelter, ninety days at the Brewster seemed like real security.” When he couldn’t afford car repairs, this setback created a dependence on public transportation and severely limited the jobs he could accept. Lough’s frustration with this vicious cycle is palpable, especially when a shared ride to a job site got him into trouble (marijuana usage in the car was the issue, although the author did not partake) and affected his ability to sleep at a particular shelter. During one of the periods between shelters, an abandoned van became a godsend, his only chance to keep relatively warm and dry that night. It was unlocked and unoccupied, contained a mattress, and remained undisturbed until daybreak. Throughout the text, the author also includes bleak images of some of the locations he frequented during this time. After 18 months, Lough’s previously learned skills as a handyman offered him a way out when he found a steady job as an onsite building manager performing maintenance duties. To his credit, the author successfully conveys a precarious existence—at once monotonous and fraught with uncertainty. The only caveat about this gritty work regards the calibration of the reader’s expectations in light of a phrase from Randall Shaw’s Foreword (“an unvarnished look at the culture of homelessness”) and the broad subtitle, both of which could be a bit misleading. It may not be possible to extrapolate Lough’s experiences to other geographic locations or facets of identity such as race (he’s Caucasian), gender, or age. This memoir is a case study with significant details about everyday concerns, not a place for grand sociological theories. This is not to diminish its worth but rather to acknowledge the actual breadth of the project.
Narrow in scope, this homeless tale still offers a testimonial with undeniable value.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4917-8297-2
Page Count: 104
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
