Ovarian cancer and the world of fashion are strange bedfellows in this autobiography by the editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar. A curious combination, but one the author pulls off with intelligence and flair (and the assistance of a talented writer). The book opens with a description of the ultimate New York party, with Tilberis celebrating her acknowledged success as the editor brought over from England to revive the Hearst fashion magazine. Here were Calvin and Ralph, supermodels and movie stars gossiping and enjoying themselves, even as Tilberis and her husband hid the fact that tomorrow she would face life-or-death surgery. She did not die, and indeed recovered sufficiently to receive an award presented by her friend, Diana Princess of Wales, at Lincoln Center. But the cancer returned, treated with what was then a radical therapy, a bone marrow transplant. Her hair fell out, her nails fell off, and she lost the weight that had led one reporter to call her “bovine.” Tilberis continues to receive chemotherapy from time to time to stave off recurrence of the cancer, but she also continues her work at Bazaar. Indeed, much of the book is devoted to amusing and unpretentious tales of her climb from art student to international fashion force, including fashion shoots with models wrapped in bandages or where games of strip Ping-Pong whiled away down times. Along the way, she acquired a devoted husband and two adopted children. It’s the fertility drugs that she took in early efforts to become pregnant that she names as the cause of her villainous cancer, a theory that has some support in the medical community. A lively, unflinching, and informative account of a woman’s bout with ovarian cancer that could kick off the kind of campaign that made breast cancer a priority in women’s health studies. (b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: April 13, 1998
ISBN: 0-316-77674-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998
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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