Like spending time with your least ambitious and most charming friend.
Droll account of a circuitous path to responsible adulthood.
Enabled by a monthly allowance from her parents, Klam rolled through her 20s and into her 30s in a nebulous haze of bourgeois depression and daydreams about making it as a writer. Weeks and months floated by as she spent entire days listening to her headphones while walking around Manhattan in overalls, now and then reluctantly clocking in to work in her father’s office. Occasionally, her not-very-post-adolescent torpor was interrupted by an interview for a job as, say, Barbra Streisand’s assistant, or by an affair with a parasitic ex-con whose sponginess and lack of interest in being accountable rivaled the author’s. This material could well be annoying if Klam weren’t so funny, setting her scenes with an incisive, self-deprecating slant. Her memoir isn’t driven by action, but by conversational humor and revealing, original stories. (When her therapist touted the satisfactions of self-sufficiency, she countered, “But isn’t there also a satisfaction in getting someone to take care of you?”) Another appealing highlight is the author’s engaging rapport with her mother. Despite her avowed laziness, Klam landed a writing job at VH1, where she met her future husband and was nominated for an Emmy. The weakest part of the book is devoted to her obsession with such wedding trappings as a diamond ring and a tiara, the only acceptable accessories for “a beautiful princess in a ball gown.” Subsequent pages atone by chronicling Klam’s late introduction to real life. Her husband grappled with serious diabetes and joblessness; she sold her jewelry and was forced to find her professional footing. She gave birth to a daughter and found moderate financial success as a freelance writer for women’s magazines. Today she relishes, albeit somewhat sardonically, the rewarding flipside of growing up.
Like spending time with your least ambitious and most charming friend.Pub Date: March 27, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-59448-980-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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