Short chapters offer an inside, but hardly definitive, look at a very troubled man.
Was Aaron Hernandez a monster, a mystery, or a little of both?
Shortly after signing a contract worth more than $40 million, the NFL star was convicted of the murder of a friend and subsequently acquitted of a dual murder that was alleged to have started with a spilled drink. He then hanged himself in his prison cell. As the author, writing with Athletic contributing writer Anderson, straightforwardly recounts the lives they shared, he recognizes the warning signs that weren’t apparent at the time: the blows to the head and childhood concussions, the stern discipline by their homophobic father, the blackouts that seemed to flip a switch in Aaron’s psyche, their father’s death and their mother’s behavior that tore the family apart, and the unsavory characters who became Aaron’s friends. The murder that landed him in prison came as a shock but not exactly a surprise, though the author never explains a motive or even the nature of the relationship between Aaron and the man he killed. One of the mysteries came to light while Hernandez was in prison: He was gay, he told his mother, and had been since he was forced to perform oral sex on an older boy when he was a child. He had struggled with his sexuality ever since. In his shame, he repressed it and denied it, but it was an essential part of who he was, and he raged against it. Another mystery didn’t reveal itself until after his suicide: Doctors examined his brain and found that, as the result of multiple concussions, “Aaron suffered the most severe case of CTE ever discovered in a person his age…[in] a brain area critical to decision-making, judgment, and cognition.” The diagnosis helped explain the sudden shifts of mood, paranoia, and violent outbursts, some of which had been obvious long before he went to prison. Maybe such impulses could have been contained, or treated, if only someone had recognized the warning signs.
Short chapters offer an inside, but hardly definitive, look at a very troubled man.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-287271-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2018
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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