A memoir of a woman's journey to find her birth parents that provides some interesting reflections on the institution and...
Sequel to the author’s bestselling memoir Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found (2000).
The child of young parents compelled to give an infant daughter up to adoption in the early 1960s, Lauck begins by returning to material from her earlier memoir: her treatment at the hands of careless adoptive parents, years of being shuttled from one reluctant relation to another, the complex relationship with a half brother and horrifying experiences of sexual and emotional abuse. Here she focuses on how the knowledge of being adopted informed those early experiences and shaped the course of her failed first marriage. While the author had searched for her birth parents, and her mother especially, before the birth of her own children, the arrival of her son set in motion a larger spiritual journey to discover her identity as a woman, mother, wife and human. She studied Buddhism and struggled to save her marriage, eventually recognizing that her need to know herself contributed to the failure of a relationship with a good man. She navigated the arcane system of state adoption law and finally, with the help of a private detective, located her birth mother in Reno, Nev. The most interesting parts of the narrative describe that complex and belated parent-child relationship, which may not have resulted in any particular intimacy but did heal some of Lauck's most important psychic wounds. However, the narrative is overly cool and analytical, and the author averts her gaze from some of the most difficult and raw parts of such a history—perhaps in deference to the privacy and feelings of her natural birth family, who never emerge as fully developed characters. The result is a story that never quite compels, despite the thoughtful writing and occasionally powerful moments of emotional honesty.
A memoir of a woman's journey to find her birth parents that provides some interesting reflections on the institution and emotional experience of adoption but keeps the reader at arm's length.Pub Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58005-367-9
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Seal Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
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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