A touching memoir filled with the emotional highs and lows of a deep bond.
Country music legend Lynn shares personal moments about her friendship with Patsy Cline (1932-1963), another musical icon.
Lynn has sold more than 45 million albums worldwide and has earned countless accolades. But as she reveals in this warm memoir, if she hadn’t had the support and friendship of Cline, who died tragically in a plane crash in 1963, her rise to stardom might have been a lot harder to achieve. Lynn was a talented singer and songwriter when she first arrived in Nashville in 1959, but she was naïve in many ways: about show business; men, and husbands in particular; and elements about her own body, such as how to shave her legs or have an orgasm. But thanks to Cline’s forthright advice and tutelage, Lynn was able to navigate it all. She learned how to dress and wear makeup for her performances, how a piece of lingerie could keep her philandering husband at home, and why another woman’s sincere friendship was and is one of the most valuable assets a woman can have. “[Patsy] came into my life and changed everything,” writes the author. “And I know I meant a lot to her, too. She’ll always be a part of me. That’s what real friendships do. We made each other better.” Written in her hearty, straightforward, authentic voice—Lynn is a storyteller and country singer, not necessarily a prose stylist—the author shares an inspiring story of working in Nashville and on stages across the country that’s interwoven with moments spent with Cline where each encouraged the other to keep moving forward toward yet another successful album and achievement. Lynn reveals her sincere, heartfelt emotions throughout the narrative, giving readers a true sense of the depths of their friendship as well as the haunting pain of Cline’s death.
A touching memoir filled with the emotional highs and lows of a deep bond.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5387-0166-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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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