Hue explains the difficult process of coping with her husband Paul’s unexpected terminal illness in this debut memoir.
The author begins her book with a heartfelt dedication, immediately revealing that her husband did, in fact, lose his battle with cancer. This knowledge makes it both frustrating and admirable to watch Hue put her faith in the seemingly endless treatments, believing that her husband will get better and that their lives will return to normal. It all started with an ominous phone call, in which Paul, an Army translator, informed the author that he had to leave Iraq in order to get a proper medical examination of a lump on his neck. She frantically made a series of calls to loved ones as the reality of the situation set in, and she admitted that she didn’t want him to come home from Iraq under such circumstances. All the while, however, she remained calm for their young son, Tyler, and hopeful that things would work themselves out with God’s grace. Hue describes in straightforward detail the complexities of Paul’s diagnosis and treatment plan, even going so far as to include pages of transcribed conversations between Paul and his doctors. As the situation grows increasingly bleak, Hue’s voice remains composed, optimistic and informative. However, the memoir’s emotional quality is sometimes suppressed by the narration’s sterile tone, particularly in the first few chapters; some readers may find the long passages of clinical language detailing the treatment plans difficult to get through. However, when Hue digs deeper into the devastating details of her husband’s decline (“The nurses said that singing was his way of dealing with the pain, but it was getting harder and harder”), the memoir becomes incredibly moving. This book is particularly recommended for readers who have lost loved ones to cancer and who may be interested in the various coping methods that Hue employed.
An often touching memoir about the pain of loss and the strength one can find in true love.
Pub Date: June 17, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499188141
Page Count: 182
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 24, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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