Worth a peek for armchair voyagers.
“Uncle” Bob Harris is a world traveler, adventurer and, quite possibly, a spy for the U.S. government.
Julianna revisits her relationship with her late father’s best friend, “Uncle” Bob Harris. Julianna suffered from a rare form of arthritis that sometimes left her bedridden. Her vibrant uncle visited the family between mysterious trips to foreign locations; the rumor was that he spied for the CIA. Yet he surprised Julianna one day with an offer to travel with him, insisting that the experiences would benefit her body and mind. While in the Sahara, Julianna asked Bob to tell her his life story. He began doling out details with every trip they took together. She learned he worked in box production—editing an industry publication, selling products and acting as a liaison between American and overseas companies. His connections led to a covert gig with the U.S. State Department, for which he acquired information about a region’s need for box production facilities. Did this mean he was really a spy? More creative nonfiction than memoir, the book captures a charming, exciting personality in Bob. Julianna articulates his tales, true or not, in an engaging way. And while some moments in the book drag, specifically regarding the box industry, readers will be relieved to know the next adventure is only a few pages away. Forays to the Middle East, across Russia on the Trans Siberian Express railroads, and up Mt. Everest read like the greatest of adventures. Though these depictions are fascinating, Julianna has neglected to relate her health problems to these experiences; clearly, Bob is an interesting guy whose story is worth telling, but readers may wonder why the author felt the need to mention Julianna’s arthritis at all if she failed to follow up on the topic. The message to live life to the fullest is still clear, regardless of physical limitations.
Worth a peek for armchair voyagers.Pub Date: May 15, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4697-5983-8
Page Count: 148
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
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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