Entertaining and well-written, a worthwhile read for Ball’s fans who can stomach the sorrows she endured after her heyday....
A dismal glimpse of a legendary comedienne’s reclusive retirement, told in a series of engaging anecdotes by a fawning confidant.
Tannen, who befriended Lucille Ball during her final ten years (1979–89), focuses on her professional decline and her marriage to “second rate comic” Gary Morton. An I Love Lucy fanatic since childhood who was four decades younger than the star, Tannen claims to be Gary’s sister’s husband’s cousin––“a third cousin twice removed or something like that.” Despite this distant relation, he became Ball’s close friend and a credible spokesperson, winning the approval of her daughter, Lucie Arnaz. At her best, Ball made Tannen laugh, especially when she failed to recognize Katharine Hepburn on the phone and made “one of those contorted gestures with her mouth the way Lucy Ricardo would do when she was caught doing something naughty.” But Ball’s best rarely appears. She merely tolerated visits from her children and obsessed over her ex-husband, Desi Arnaz. By 1986, her “all too familiar trademark and gestures seemed tired and her legendary comic timing just wasn’t there” when she starred in her last sitcom, Life with Lucy, a humiliating flop. An outmoded has-been unable to get work, Ball dreaded showing her aging face in public and struggled to maintain her identity during her forced retirement. Divulging both Ball’s clinical depression and her lust for pranks, Tannen reveals the similarities and discords between the real woman and her merry on-stage persona. Refraining from scandal, but not from name-dropping and melodrama, the author spices up Ball’s humdrum retirement-hours of playing backgammon and watching Wheel of Fortune, with cameos from Shirley MacLaine and Liza Minnelli.
Entertaining and well-written, a worthwhile read for Ball’s fans who can stomach the sorrows she endured after her heyday. Those more intent on family drama and dirt on Desi should check out the more sensational accounts of Kathleen Bradley and Tom Gilbert.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-28753-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2001
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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