A satisfying, well-crafted reminder of how one family’s story can encapsulate the cultural history of America as a whole.
Godges presents a vast narrative depicting what it means to be an American, told through the lens of an expressive family story.
Written in four parts, Godges’ first memoir spans his family’s immigrant beginnings to his parents’ assimilation to a family of six kids growing up, growing apart and finally coming back together. The memoir is rich with the cultural history of 20th-century America; the hardships of immigrants, the harrowing times of the Depression and World War II, dealing with mental illness, the tumultuous Vietnam-era social divide and the AIDS epidemic all impact Godges’ family. The author shines a spotlight on each member of the family particularly affected by these events, hanging back until his turn to present a facet of American life deeply meaningful to him—being a gay man in this country. Roman Catholicism also permeates the book, providing a pillar of community for the Italian- and Polish-American family, but also becoming a divisive force between husband and wife and parent and child, causing the family to face questions over divorce and homosexuality. The intricately crafted narrative is written with the specificity of a historian, seamlessly flowing through the decades. Yet the book is also poignant and personal, capturing the intimate, intricate workings of a family with amazing clarity. Godges concludes that “to be an American in the fullest sense of the word meant to discover oneself as an individual within a community.” This ambitious book succeeds in negotiating the balance between individual and community, telling the engrossing story of an individual family within the greater society of America.
A satisfying, well-crafted reminder of how one family’s story can encapsulate the cultural history of America as a whole.Pub Date: July 4, 2010
ISBN: 978-1451508017
Page Count: 532
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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