Will appeal to fans of the Caddyshack films and to those who revere the wisdom of the locker room.
A freelance golf writer rehearses his decades of caddying and carousing at some of the toniest venues in the world—from Augusta to St. Andrews.
Dunn comes across in much of this mostly frivolous text as one of those perpetual adolescents who populate Judd Apatow films. As he recounts his exploits on the links, in bars and campgrounds and rooming houses, he displays a surprisingly obtuse attitude about women. He repeats crude sexist stories (sans irony), rails against the “aggressive older women on the prowl” in Aspen, describes the endowments of women he sees on the course and, of course, “cougars.” At various points, he waxes philosophical about the meaning of it all—e.g., golf and life are both journeys. Dunn occasionally alludes to a book (Siddhartha) and to his efforts to become a writer, but this does not occur often. The most significant relationship he relates is with his father, who, unsurprisingly, was not thrilled with his son’s decision to spend his youth carrying other people’s golf bags. His father’s disapprobation pops up continually, but near the end, things grow more serious: His father became grievously ill, and for the first time in their lives, father and son had to come to terms with each other. In these passages, the author emerges as something more than the self-absorbed adolescent he appears elsewhere to be. Also of interest are his descriptions of some of the great courses he “looped” (caddied), some of the notables for whom he caddied (Bill Gates, Arnold Palmer), some of the amusing experiences he had when he didn’t really know what he was doing (his early rounds in Scotland), and encounters with golfers and caddies who were less than amiable.
Will appeal to fans of the Caddyshack films and to those who revere the wisdom of the locker room.Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-7704-3718-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: April 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
