A fine snapshot of a stalwart individual.
A woman with terminal cancer chooses to live the end of her life to the fullest on an around-the-world cruise.
Jones (Letters from the Skeleton Coast, 2017) recalls events beginning in 2007 with his wife Joanne’s diagnosis of terminal cancer. Breast cancer, which she had battled for years previously, had metastasized throughout her body, giving her only a couple of years to live. After participating in an intensive drug trial that failed to produce results, she continued with traditional chemotherapy but to no avail. In late 2008, they made the difficult decision to discontinue treatment. He writes of Joanne: “The thought of spending her final days in a hospital bed was not an attractive option for her. With the countdown at about three months, she decided on her third wish—the final cruise.” At this point, the story turns its voice over to Joanne through a long series of emails, “unchanged and unedited,” which she wrote to family and friends while aboard the South Pacific cruise. These messages reveal her courageous and optimistic personality, ending with the words “There is a song with lyrics that is my mantra: ‘If you have the chance to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance.’ My dear friends—we have DANCED!!” This book first intrigues readers with its title, and then the prologue builds up expectations even more with the line “Well, let me tell you the amazing story of the black pearl necklace.” The tale quickly loses its momentum, however, especially since the drama of the necklace constitutes a very small percentage of the work, and the conflict and resolution behind it are rather anticlimactic. But the author excels at painting a splendid picture of Joanne and her selfless, upbeat character, something that will be particularly inspiring to those fighting cancer. Unfortunately, most of the text recounts simple reminiscences instead of employing salient details to purposefully contribute to plot and character development, elements that are vital in creating a riveting account. While close friends and family should adore this book, it will likely fail to engage a broader audience.
A fine snapshot of a stalwart individual.Pub Date: March 1, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 100
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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