A transfixing account of death, from the mundane to the oddly hair-raising.
A lively chronicle of a death investigator’s days, from forensic pathologist Melinek and her husband, Mitchell.
Forensic pathologists investigate sudden, unexpected or violent deaths. In addition to conducting the autopsies, they also visit the scene of death, counsel the grieving, collaborate with detectives and testify in court. For Melinek, in whose voice this story is told, it is a match made in heaven: “Not a scratch on his limbs and torso—but his head looked like an egg you smash on the counter. We even call it an ‘eggshell skull fracture.’ Isn’t that cool?” she asks her husband, who responds simply, “No….No, it isn’t.” Despite the subject, Melinek’s enthusiasm for her calling is always apparent, and her writing is un–self-consciously bouncy, absorbed and mordant (though not caustic). Most of the action takes place at the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner, where she trained with her mentor, the wonderfully drawn Dr. Charles Hirsch, who ended their Friday afternoon meetings with, “Any old business, new business, monkey business? No? Why then, I think I’ll go home and have a double.” The authors take us along on an utterly engrossing guided tour of an autopsy—e.g., livers are the slipperiest organs, and the abdominal cavity can sprout accessory spleens, “like bright red mushrooms.” There is a body pulverized by an eggroll-making machine; a green body with a purple face; bodies covered with swastikas; and suicide jumpers who seemingly hit every ledge and protrusion on the way down. There are countless deaths that call forth sorrow, as well as a number of suicides, which are an aching reminder of Melinek’s father’s suicide, which she faces unsparingly. The authors display a fine hand at describing a host of medical mysteries, as well as the harrowing aftermath of 9/11.
A transfixing account of death, from the mundane to the oddly hair-raising.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-2725-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
Riveting and exquisitely crafted.
Musician, poet and visual artist Smith (Trois, 2008, etc.) chronicles her intense life with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe during the 1960s and ’70s, when both artists came of age in downtown New York.
Both born in 1946, Smith and Mapplethorpe would become widely celebrated—she for merging poetry with rock ’n’ roll in her punk-rock performances, he as the photographer who brought pornography into the realm of art. Upon meeting in the summer of 1967, they were hungry, lonely and gifted youths struggling to find their way and their art. Smith, a gangly loser and college dropout, had attended Bible school in New Jersey where she took solace in the poetry of Rimbaud. Mapplethorpe, a former altar boy turned LSD user, had grown up in middle-class Long Island. Writing with wonderful immediacy, Smith tells the affecting story of their entwined young lives as lovers, friends and muses to one another. Eating day-old bread and stew in dumpy East Village apartments, they forged fierce bonds as soul mates who were at their happiest when working together. To make money Smith clerked in bookstores, and Mapplethorpe hustled on 42nd Street. The author colorfully evokes their days at the shabbily elegant Hotel Chelsea, late nights at Max’s Kansas City and their growth and early celebrity as artists, with Smith winning initial serious attention at a St. Mark’s Poetry Project reading and Mapplethorpe attracting lovers and patrons who catapulted him into the arms of high society. The book abounds with stories about friends, including Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, William Burroughs, Sam Shepard, Gregory Corso and other luminaries, and it reveals Smith’s affection for the city—the “gritty innocence” of the couple’s beloved Coney Island, the “open atmosphere” and “simple freedom” of Washington Square. Despite separations, the duo remained friends until Mapplethorpe’s death in 1989. “Nobody sees as we do, Patti,” he once told her.
Riveting and exquisitely crafted.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-621131-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
For the author’s fans.
A Fox News journalist and talk show host sets out to prove that she is not “an empty St. John suit in five-inch stiletto heels.”
The child of devout Christians, Minnesota native Carlson’s first love was music. She began playing violin at age 6 and quickly revealed that she was not only a prodigy, but also a little girl who thrived on pleasing audiences. Working with top teachers, she developed her art over the years. But by 16, Carlson began “chafing at [the] rigid, structured life” of a concert violinist–in-training and temporarily put music aside. At the urging of her mother, the high achiever set her sights on winning the Miss T.E.E.N. pageant, where she was first runner-up. College life at Stanford became yet another quest for perfection that led Carlson to admit it was “not attainable” after she earned a C in one class. At the end of her junior year and again at the urging of her mother, Carlson entered the 1989 Miss America pageant, which she would go on to win thanks to a brilliant violin performance. Dubbed the “smart Miss America,” Carlson struggled with pageant stereotypes as well as public perceptions of who she was. Being in the media spotlight every day during her reign, however, also helped her decide on a career in broadcast journalism. Yet success did not come easily. Sexual harassment dogged her, and many expressed skepticism about her abilities due to her pageant past. Even after she rose to national prominence, first as a CBS news broadcaster and then as a Fox talk show host, Carlson continued—and continues—to be labeled as “dumb or a bimbo.” Her history clearly demonstrates that she is neither. However, Carlson’s overly earnest tone, combined with her desire to show her Minnesota “niceness…in action,” as well as the existence of “abundant brain cells,” dampens the book’s impact.
For the author’s fans.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-42745-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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