A poignant and eloquent memoir.
A notable novelist and nonfiction writer’s account of the once-wealthy grandparents who raised her and their fall from financial grace.
Received “as an unexpected late-life child” meant to balance out the “misdeeds” of her mother, a beautiful but irresponsible young woman with an insatiable obsession for designer shoes, Harrison (True Crimes: A Family Album, 2016, etc.) lived with her grandparents in a big house on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Though hardly wealthy, they were always impeccably turned out, quietly collecting Blue Chip trading stamps to pay for what they otherwise could not afford to do: “reshingle the roof, replaster the inside of the pool and resurface the driveway.” The family’s real “wealth” resided in the many stories her grandparents told the author and in the many photographs and curios they had collected during their eventful lives. Harrison’s Jewish grandfather, Harry Jacobs, was born poor in London; after a stint as a soldier in World War I, he left England to seek his fortune in Alaska. There, he made a living as a fur trapper and had two sons with a Christian Scientist wife. Later, after her tragic death, he became a traveling salesman. The author’s maternal grandmother, Margaret Sassoon, grew up in Shanghai. A member of the Jewish merchant class, her family once “had a 70 percent monopoly on the entire opium trade” and were labeled the “Rothschilds of the East.” In her youth, Margaret jilted a wealthy businessman her father had chosen for her, turned down marriage proposals from an exiled Russian prince, and flirted with Edward VIII. When Harry and Margaret met in Los Angeles in 1941, both were middle-aged and ready to settle down. The wild-child daughter they had together was the unexpected byproduct of a marriage that began with an impulsive elopement. Blending family history and mythology, anecdotes and photographs, this book is not simply one woman’s open love letter to two magnificently eccentric grandparents; it is also a testament to the enduring power of memory.
A poignant and eloquent memoir.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-385-54267-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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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