Hewitt’s (Georgia's Great Undertaking, 2014, etc.) insightful family memoir provides a glimpse into the life of a complicated woman.
Maggie Mosteller McLendon lived a full life. She grew up listening to her father’s and grandfather’s stories of the hardships suffered by Southerners during the Civil War and died after witnessing the struggles and victories of the civil rights movement. From her little corner of the world, Maggie observed a great deal of change while clinging to her values and traditions. Author Hewitt was very close with Grandmother Maggie. She spent a good deal of her youth with her grandparents in Thermal, Alabama, a small mining town not far from Birmingham. Hewitt’s memories of baking gingerbread and thumbing through old photo albums portray an enchanting childhood despite the threat of poverty looming in the background. Yet as Linda grows older, she realizes that Maggie is a complicated woman, and she struggles to reconcile her beloved grandmother with a woman who later vehemently blames women and blacks for the troubles of modern society. Hewitt paints a vivid portrait of a strong, intelligent and multifaceted person who is alternately admirable and upsetting. Hewitt’s memoir is an honest study, balancing idyllic childhood memories with a more realistic and clinical look at the past. It’s captivating to get to know Maggie through the eyes of a child, and later, from the viewpoint of an adult. The collapse of a small industrial Southern town runs parallel to Maggie’s story, the effects of time taking its toll on both the woman and the place. Though personal reflection can hobble momentum, particularly in the final chapter, Maggie and her family stories will still entertain those outside the family. At its best, Maggie’s recollections of neighbors and friends feel like trading gossip over the backyard fence. The vintage photographs and clever drawings by Robert Hewitt are a satisfying addition to the text.
Hewitt’s memoir leaves us with the memory of a woman who is beautiful, strong, sad and difficult; i.e., human.
Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2014
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 212
Publisher: ArbeitenZeit Media
Review Posted Online: Oct. 29, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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