Walsh, novelist (The Man Who Buried Jesus, 1989) and literary detective (Into My Own: The English Years of Robert Frost, 1988, etc.), now brings his impressive speculative powers to bear on the scandals surrounding the closing years of Emily Dickinson's life. The critical year was 1883: Emily's beloved eight-year-old nephew died; 70-year-old Judge Otis Lord, whom Emily hoped to marry, suffered a fatal stroke; failing health confined her to her room; she lost hope of publishing her poems; and her brother, Austin, entered a mÇnage Ö trois with Mabel Todd and her husband, David (who later suffered a nervous collapse from their irregular lifestyle). According to Walsh, Emily, influenced by Romeo and Heathcliff, then committed suicide by strychnine ingestion. Susan Dickinson, the poet's sister-in-law, discouraged posthumous publication of Emily's poems to avoid attracting attention to the sordid living arrangements of the mÇnage, but Vinnie, the poet's sister, asked Mabel to copy them, with Mabel's name ultimately joining Colonel Higginson's as editor and friend of the poet, even though she had never been allowed in Emily's presence. In 1930, when Emily's poetry was rediscovered, Mabel, as the only survivor, become the source of biographical information, which she altered to establish her own reputation as expert and confidante. Her daughter Millicent published Ancestor's Brocade: The Literary Debut of Emily Dickinson, permanently establishing Mabel as a literary heroine and Susan Dickinson and Vinnie, who had challenged Mabel's claim to a piece of Emily's property, as villains. It is difficult to say how much of this story is true. Mostly, it has the quality of a fascinating piece of historical fiction—in part because of Walsh's emphasis on the sordid (Austin was allowed ``a place in the family bed,'' and David was allegedly allowed to watch Austin and Mabel making love on Sunday evenings), and his neglect of precise citations, referring to other biographers without naming them or the works he claims to be refuting.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-8021-1119-X
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1991
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.
