A gritty, melancholy memoir leavened by the author’s amiable, engrossing narrative tenor.
The journey of a teenaged theater-school dropout enticed into traveling to Southeast Asia to be a “harem girl.”
Christened “Mariah” by her ballerina birth mother, the author was renamed “Jillian” by her Jewish adoptive parents who acquired her through an illegal “gray-market” transaction. A rocky childhood in suburban New Jersey was followed by a hardscrabble tenure in Manhattan after the author abandoned a New York University education, opting instead for the “proverbial school of life.” Desperate for cash, she exchanged waitressing for stripping, then began escorting for a madam. In the early 1990s, a lucrative offer to “amuse a rich businessman in Singapore” seemed too good to pass up, and it was revealed that the job was really with Prince Jefri (nicknamed “Robin”) of the affluent Brunei royal family. Eager to be relieved of her East Coast “bohemian mantle,” Lauren abandoned a loving boyfriend and her hospitalized father to embrace an “alarming recklessness,” flying to Singapore with only $30, which she spent on a cab to the airport. Together with “Destiny,” another girl chosen from the interviews, Lauren arrived at a high-walled palace, was stripped of her passport and embarked on a life of endless late-night parties populated by beautiful, multicultural and highly competitive women. Crash courses on etiquette, bowing, Muslim customs and basic subservient behavior ensued, all preparing her for the brilliance and ease of an opulent lifestyle with playboy prince Robin. After extending her stay, however, depression, homesickness and harsh reality sent her back to New York, where an unwelcome pregnancy spurred a fruitless search for her birth mother, along with a few shocking twists. Lauren, who considers singer Patti Smith “the barometer of all things cool and right,” is a deft storyteller, imparting equal parts poignant reflection and wisdom into her enlightening book.
A gritty, melancholy memoir leavened by the author’s amiable, engrossing narrative tenor.Pub Date: April 27, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-452-29631-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2010
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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