A feel-good narrative that underscores the brutal effects of poverty at home and injustice abroad.
Unusual split memoir of the intertwined lives of a reformed drug dealer and a misfit turned Africa diplomat.
In alternating chapters, Prendergast (co-author: The Enough Moment: Fighting to End Africa’s Worst Human Rights Crimes, 2010) and Mattocks describe the bond that began many years ago, when Prendergast started an informal “Big Brother” relationship with Mattocks when he was seven years old and homeless. Prendergast depicts his own adolescence as deeply unhappy. Scarred by acne and familial estrangement, he retreated into athletics and fantasies of becoming a “do-gooder.” He’d already discovered a preoccupation with Africa, specifically the suffering which the West ignored, that would eventually lead to his life’s work, but also impulsively befriended Michael and his younger brother, James, while visiting a Washington D.C., shelter in 1983: “These boys had nothing and yet radiated with life and sunshine.” Over time, Prendergast provided a vital emotional lifeline to the Mattocks boys while trying to assuage his interest in Africa, moving from internship to lobbying on behalf of a small philanthropy, Bread for the World, and visiting the continent’s trouble spots. Eventually, the author’ss dedication to this lonely cause led him to the Clinton White House, where he was Director for African Affairs at the NSC, and to involvement with celebrities like Don Cheadle and Angelina Jolie. The chapters that capture Mattocks’ perspective are written in an unadorned, colloquial style that is nonetheless effective in capturing the forgotten realities of black urban America during the ’80s, when gun violence and crack hellishly transformed daily life in places like D.C. Mattocks’ depiction of his and James’ gradual immersion in the drug trade is chilling, and he considers himself fortunate to have escaped, but also acknowledges that Prendergast’s mentoring made a crucial difference: “Even though my dad left, we had J.P…. he cared about us in a way even my mom and my aunts didn’t know how to.”
A feel-good narrative that underscores the brutal effects of poverty at home and injustice abroad.Pub Date: May 17, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-46484-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2011
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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