Many interviews (though none with Connery) give a lift to this otherwise placid celebio of the popular actor, which follows on the heels of Andrew Yule's 1992 Connery bio of the same title—a much stronger work. There's really no need to read this new Parker (Prince Philip and Five for Hollywood—both 1991, etc.) if you've already read the Yule, though readers coming fresh to the life of Connery should find it steadily interesting, with Connery's quotes and maverick- like behavior giving bounce to some pages—as do the interviews. The actor's rise from rags to riches came about by indirection, with Connery—raised in Edinburgh—having many lowly jobs as a youth, then being dropped by the Royal Navy for a stomach ulcer after a year's service. His interest in bodybuilding led to a small part in a British roadshow of South Pacific, which led to larger parts on stage and TV, his first big role being the punch-drunk lead in Requiem for a Heavyweight. Connery, Parker tells us, liked Marlon Brando's underplaying and studied Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant's ways of bringing their roles to themselves rather than changing themselves for the roles. Parker respects his subject's private life far more than Yule does, and doesn't dig as deeply into the acting. Most interesting here is the information about Connery's avid pursuit of being paid well and to the penny for what he does, which brought about his suit against producer Albert R. Broccoli to collect money due for the actor's James Bond performances. Strong pages here and there, but many in Sunday supplement style. (Photographs)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-8092-3668-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1993
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
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