Though lively and richly detailed, Valenti’s work lacks the self-awareness essential to a memoir worth pondering.
A new memoir from the Guardian columnist and “professional feminist.”
“Who would I be if I didn’t live in a world that hated women?” asks Valenti (Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness, 2012, etc.). As she skips around through her memories, the author does include some examples of unpleasant encounters with men: the guys who whistled at her or rubbed up against her in subways as she was growing up in Queens, New York; the college boyfriend who indulged in a nasty species of revenge after they broke up; the high school teacher who said that he would give her an A if she gave him a hug; the married friend who expressed sexual interest in her. On the other hand, Valenti, who admits that she overindulged in alcohol and cocaine for years, acting on the theory that “cocaine let me drink as much as I wanted without passing out or embarrassing myself,” seems to be at least partially responsible for some of her own suffering. When she notes, “I cheated on almost all my boyfriends with regularity and without remorse,” it’s difficult to give her much sympathy when she complains about a boyfriend who was chronically half an hour late for everything. The sections of the memoir that deal with the premature birth of her daughter, her difficulty bonding with the infant, and her daughter’s selective mutism are touching, but they are not concerned with pain caused by the hatred of men; Valenti has not a word of complaint about her “lovely” feminist husband. The author ends the book with pages of insulting or demeaning emails and Facebook posts directed toward her, an odd choice since it gives the last word to her critics. Ultimately, the scattered narrative includes some jaw-dropping scenes but fails to live up to its provocative premise.
Though lively and richly detailed, Valenti’s work lacks the self-awareness essential to a memoir worth pondering.Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-243508-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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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