Though some pieces begin jauntily but fade into irrelevance, Morris generally keeps readers engaged, as she has done...
The nonagenarian historian and travel writer invites us into her private world with a mixed but amiable daily diary of her thoughts, observations, and reflections.
Morris (Battleship Yamato, 2018, etc.) does not dwell overmuch on the indignities and tribulations of old age; rather, she celebrates the fact that she is still alive and (mostly) kicking, taking pleasure in the grand and mundane in like measure. She does not mention being a pioneering transsexual, nor—since her traveling days are now few—her fame as one of our most accomplished travel writers and historians. Many of the entries are lighter than air, others nostalgic or wistful, chipper or gloomy, lilting and poetic, naïve or mildly cynical. Some deploy philosophical insights on the human condition and sharp assessments of current world events. The book moves from humor to veiled melancholy to sharply delineated sense of place, with some of the author’s own sprightly verse for grace notes. While her chief subject is her home of 70 years, Wales, Morris definitely has some bees in her bonnet. Whatever pops into her head gets equal time, from Brexit and agnosticism to the abomination of zoos, the malleability of memory, the better angels of Britain's imperial era, the U.K.'s current malaise, her special affection for the United States, the intimate presence of the books in her personal library, the horrors of the daily news, the spellbinding mysteries of birds, and the seductive traps of ego. There's also an ode to Montaigne, asides on her longtime companion Elizabeth, a dissection of monarchical absurdities, an appreciation of technological advancements, an accounting of the marvelous menagerie of keepsakes in her home, and an elegy for the changing nature of the English character.
Though some pieces begin jauntily but fade into irrelevance, Morris generally keeps readers engaged, as she has done successfully for decades.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63149-536-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
IN THE NEWS
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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