A lovely story that gets bogged down in detail.
British novelist Lanchester (Fragrant Harbor, 2002, etc.) uncovers his mother’s secret life—nothing sordid, just surprising—and in the process comes to understand his own character.
“All families have secrets,” the author declares near the beginning of his uneven memoir. But it was not until after his parents’ deaths that he became more than vaguely aware of what his mother was hiding. He spent the next few years researching his parents’ lives and trying to understand in particular the demons that pursued his mother, Julia Gunnigan. Born in County Mayo to a large, impecunious Irish family, at age 16 (in 1937), she elected to enter a convent, as did several of her sisters. But Julia left convent life twice, the second time after she’d taken final vows. She tried nursing, teaching and writing under a pseudonym, then in London met Bill Lanchester, an attractive, intelligent international banker. (Born in South Africa, he had worked in Hong Kong, Singapore and other spots in Southeast Asia.) When they met in 1959, Bill was 33; Julia, nearing 40, took her sister’s name in order to delete nine years from her age. They married, and Julia spent the rest of her life lying about her past. The first two-thirds of the narrative presents the fruits of Lanchester’s research into his parents’ lives. Assuming that readers will find the minutiae of his mother’s life as compelling as he does, he reproduces pages of her dull letters from the convent, supplemented with his eye-glazing commentary. Once the author arrives on the scene, however, the pace quickens and interest intensifies. Lanchester writes affectingly of his relationships with his parents, of their painful deaths from heart conditions, of his struggles with debilitating panic attacks and his difficulties with writing.
A lovely story that gets bogged down in detail.Pub Date: Feb. 15, 2007
ISBN: 0-399-15300-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Marian Wood/Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 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
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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