A pleasant, if sometimes-monotonous, account that may appeal most to younger readers.
A memoir that recounts a young girl’s childhood adventures on the American prairie and her lifelong Christian faith.
Yexley (Not My Plan, 2015) pens a charming remembrance of growing up on a farm in Columbia, South Dakota, in the 1950s and ’60s, surrounded by loving family members and farm animals, and expressions of unwavering religious commitment. She writes about her early years of going to school, caring for animals, going on family drives through Nevada and California, and taking piano and cornet lessons; she also describes how the Vietnam War affected her small, intimate community. One particularly endearing chapter tells the story of the young author helping her grandmother take care of chickens, and in doing so, learning about responsibility, hard work, and finding lessons in her mistakes. She also learned about “dressing” chickens—preparing them for killing—and recalls the sadness of witnessing her first butchering. From a young age, she was protective of her younger sister, Yvonne, admired her older brother, Ray, and was fascinated by her grandparents’ many hobbies. Christianity plays a major part in many vignettes and it’s shown to have been an important component of her family’s daily struggles and successes. At the end of each chapter, she includes “Lessons Learned” and “Questions to Ponder,” such as “How do you overcome your fear?” and “Have you ever lost a pet?” However, these lessons and questions can sometimes feel reminiscent of those in children’s books. Overall, the memoir is overwhelmingly positive in tone. As a result, however, Yexley seems to gloss over some of the more serious moments of her childhood; for example, she only gently alludes to corporal punishment, poverty, and the isolation of middle America. She also has only complimentary things to say about each of her family members, and these purely positive descriptions render them somewhat colorless as characters. (Photos of the author’s family members are included throughout.)
A pleasant, if sometimes-monotonous, account that may appeal most to younger readers.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-973603-26-9
Page Count: 124
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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