Self-indulgent ramblings that reveal more about the author than about her putative subject. Relentless pop-psych memoirist Chernin (A Different Kind of Listening, 1995, etc.) opens, fittingly enough, with a blow-by-blow account of her state of mind on Feb. 24, 1991, when she attended a concert at Berkeley given by a then-unknown 25-year-old Italian mezzo soprano. Chernin's devotees may be impressed with her vapid meandering (``I have taught myself not to expect too much from life, except where music is concerned''); those who picked up the book under the impression it was about Bartoli may feel some impatience. Breathless descriptions of Chernin's rapturous response to that and subsequent performances add nothing to our understanding of the singer best known for championing the neglected 18th-century repertoire and for zesty comic turns in Mozart and Rossini operas. An unintentionally hilarious chapter about a 1993 Chernin/Bartoli interview shows the artist politely answering questions on the order of ``Do you have a sense of carrying a sacred message?,'' while the author favors us with such portentous comments as ``With these words Cecilia Bartoli has taken on a strangely ageless quality.'' Coauthor Stendhal, identified only as Chernin's ``usual companion,'' provides some relief with a 70-page performance guide free from the bloated adjectives and trite theorizing of the previous 138 pages; her detailed, often shrewd analyses concentrate on what Bartoli actually did rather than her own reactions to it. But the book's overall tone is Chernin's. Anyone who believes with her that divas are intermediaries between the gods and the rest of us, or that opera inducts us into ``the secret emotional life of women'' (never mind that most of it was written by men) had better hope that these ideas find a more persuasive proponent next time around.
Pub Date: March 14, 1997
ISBN: 0-06-018644-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1997
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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