Jermaine Jackson sets out to resurrect the tarnished legacy of late superstar brother Michael in an emotionally charged memoir.
“Erms” (Michael’s nickname for Jermaine) had a complex relationship with his brother. There was jealousy, sibling rivalry and professional brinksmanship. A lot went down between the two since first huddling together as starry-eyed innocents at their window overlooking Jackson Street in the 1960s. Ultimately, the gradual degradation of their close relationship led to long periods of estrangement where Michael was alone. Jermaine attempts to present all this in the most positive light, and his enduring love for his doomed brother is evident. But his reliability as an advocate for The King of Pop's more inscrutable behavior remains questionable. According to Jermaine, Michael kept his brothers at arm’s length during much of the baffling metamorphosis he underwent later in life. The author clouds the picture even further at times when it appears he is simply singing his own praises. Jermaine’s narrative works best in recounting the early years of the Jackson 5 when the brothers were undeniably united in a musical dream and Michael was unquestionably the coolest little dude anywhere to command a stage. Even here, though, the seeds of Michael’s downfall loom. The insular nature of the brotherhood itself seemed to preclude outside relationships and produce in Michael an overreliance on a unit that was always destined to change, leaving him adrift when it did. Couple that with the young artist's inability to effectively cope with his growing body dysmorphia, and some of the head-scratching events that followed in MJ's life begin to make more sense. Whether Michael was the victim of twisted, uninformed perceptions of him, as Jermaine steadfastly asserts, or was actually the dangerous eccentric portrayed by the media, the view from 2300 Jackson Street is still tragic. A not entirely convincing but unwavering defense of an unquestionably odd performer, and an intimate look at one of the greatest recording artists of all time.
Pub Date: Sept. 13, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-5156-0
Page Count: 464
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
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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