A technically informative, upbeat reminiscence that should appeal to aspiring medical professionals.
This second installment of a three-volume memoir focuses on a man’s years in medical school and his postgraduate specialty training in England and Scotland.
Case entered medical school in 1955 in Sheffield, England, a city known for its steel industry. It was the beginning of a 15-year journey that ultimately would land him in Alberta, Canada. Evidencing a remarkable ability to recall details, the author shares his classroom and clinical experiences as well as the lighter adventures of student life. Short, lively anecdotes related to youthful antics and friends and comprehensive descriptions of his multitude of residences over the years offer respite from longer sections that depict dissections and specific medical procedures, such as the first time he assisted in brain surgery. Although the portrayal of this particular incident is perhaps a bit too graphic for lay readers, it does include a surprising insider tidbit: “After a couple of hours, partway through the procedure, we stopped briefly for tea and biscuits.” Medical school was a six-year stint—“three years of preclinical studies were followed by three years of clinical study during which we learnt to apply the knowledge we had obtained to treat living patients.” And this was followed by a series of appointments to a vast spectrum of specialty departments. While Case had decided that he definitely wanted to be a surgeon, he also sought to accrue substantial experience in all of the medical disciplines in order to be prepared to practice his specialty in a rural area where a doctor had to be ready for anything. American readers, accustomed to titles such as student, intern, and resident, will likely need time to acclimate to the British terms for these positions. Surgeons, for example, held the title mister rather than doctor, a reference to their origins as barber-surgeons. Case’s genial prose, peppered with occasional 1960s- and ’70s-relevant social commentary, reveals his tender, compassionate attitude toward his patients. But it is encumbered by the author’s extensive use of medical terminology, which slows the story’s pace and makes many sections tough going for a general audience.
A technically informative, upbeat reminiscence that should appeal to aspiring medical professionals.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-5255-4195-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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