An intriguing peek into a piece of Americana that will likely appeal mainly to derby enthusiasts.
A debut memoir offers a decade’s worth of insider stories from a roller derby star.
Early on, Smith says he is writing this book for the many roller derby “fans who love the game and travel four hundred to five hundred miles to attend matches in their area.” Indeed, this is a work for devotees, those familiar with the rules and terminology, not to mention the players, of a sport that seems to have reached its peak in the early 1970s. It is also for his fellow skaters, who should thoroughly enjoy the recollections. Other readers may wish to Google a glossary of the lingo to follow along. Still, the author offers plenty of captivating tidbits for the nonaficionado. Smith has a compelling personal story to tell, and the on-track and off-track antics of the professional men and women who willingly endured all manner of broken body parts to partake in the joy of skating remain quite astounding. The back stories of heavy drinking and fast driving could put today’s bad-boy athletes to shame, although there is a noticeable respect for women among this group. Smith describes a violent combat sport, with fans happy to join in the mayhem. After 1973, the derby became scripted: plays and fights were prearranged, and that’s when Smith and his then-wife, Francine Cochu, a derby star in her own right, decided to retire. The author examines the uniqueness of roller derby: teams comprised a men’s group and a women’s group, and the final outcomes were determined by combining the two scores; players drove from town to town in 16-to-17-day spurts without a break; the team had to set up and tear down its own derby tracks in each town; and the skaters received terrible pay. Smith delivers what is really a series of vignettes, often forsaking chronology for the memory of the moment, so there is considerable jumping back and forth in time. This sometimes results in a tedious repetition of events and personal history that should be summarized in the second or third mention rather than repeated. But his text turns out to be comfortably conversational, best in small doses.
An intriguing peek into a piece of Americana that will likely appeal mainly to derby enthusiasts.Pub Date: Feb. 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4917-8017-6
Page Count: 244
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2016
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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