An unconventional and strikingly lyrical observation of women and their desire to speak regarding the fulfillment of their...
A revealing look at postmodern feminism and its role in female desire through one woman’s personal anecdotes, meditations and professional research.
Angel provides an intelligent examination of how today’s women satiate their needs and desires. The author examines her own sexual experiences as both a writer and a lover, from her teen years to the present, in poetic yet fragmented theories revolving around the feminist icons Virginia Woolf and Susan Sontag. This is not to say that her philosophy leans toward the bias of these women; rather, she uses their thoughts as examples and builds on them to answer an important question that many women face in some form or another: “What is it to define, or even to know, our desires—to identify which are our own, and which result from a kind of porousness?” The definition of this identification of desire within oneself, the desire for women to be able to freely speak up about what they really want and how they want it is answered through Angel’s own emotional bonding to the modern woman’s intuitive feelings of shame, beauty, and confusion of sex or lust for love. Throughout the book, structured as a numbered series of vignettes, short paragraphs and even single sentences, the author struggles with her personal convictions regarding love and lust in and out of the bedroom. However, she staunchly maintains her theory with an empowering conclusion that begs for women to speak up above the commercialized version of sex and the woman’s perceived notion of what it takes to fulfill their desires. “The desire to speak is a desire to burst through silence, to puncture,” she writes. “As such, it is also erotic; it contains its own excitement. Speaking undoes the perceived straitjacketing. Unlaces the corset, winds down the hair.”
An unconventional and strikingly lyrical observation of women and their desire to speak regarding the fulfillment of their sexual and emotional needs.Pub Date: June 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-374-28040-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
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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