Forced humor: not funny.
Remarkably unsuccessful attempt to amuse in a chronicle of one young woman’s bumpy metamorphosis from feckless college graduate to responsible, married Arizona citizen.
Frequently relying for laughs on body parts and body functions (sagging breasts, facial hair, excrement), Notaro (The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club, 2002) begins her rites of passage as a boyfriend moves out, running off with an old girlfriend to follow his dream of growing and smoking pot and learning to play an acoustic guitar. Notaro is more annoyed than heartbroken, but when she meets the amazing “Good Guy,” she freaks out, feeling pressured to keep him. The guy is really good; soon after moving in, he proposes, which means she must deal with a wedding. Mom takes charge as Notaro, comprehending the “phenomenon known as Dreading the Wedding,” is sucked into the great “bridal black hole.” She worries about her weight, body hair, and getting through the ceremony itself, which takes place three miles from a major airport, making most of the responses inaudible. The happy couple then buys a house that turns out to have no air-conditioning, so Notaro and her husband fight over who sweats the least. Married life has its problems, like backed-up plumbing and strange smells, but she copes with that as pluckily as she does with the itchy bra she buys at an outlet mall, becoming an aunt to the imperious “Little King,” and rescuing her Nana in the grocery store as she scales a wall of baked beans. To her horror, she realizes she is finally becoming an adult: she’s using her grocery coupons and doesn't understand the new Levi’s commercials. In the best and least forced chapter, Notaro describes sitting next to Nancy Sinatra on a plane flight and telling the singer how much Frank Sinatra had meant to her Italian-American family, especially her Nana. If only the rest of the text were that relaxed and natural.
Forced humor: not funny.Pub Date: July 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-76092-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2003
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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