A most eloquent Holocaust memoir, distinguished by symmetry of storyline and theme. Eichengreen spins out several narrative threads that braid neatly in the end, beginning with the story of how an American uncle, despite the Nazi threat, refused to sponsor the emigration of her family to the States: Years later, the author confronts this man, as well others who compounded her suffering. Before the war, though, Eichengreen's Hamburg-based, Polish-born family met tragedy head on, culminating in 1941 in her father's return home from Dachau in a cigar box—a clump of ashes briskly delivered by the Gestapo. Soon after, Eichengreen, her mother, and her sister are deported to Poland's Lodz Ghetto, where the author watches her mother swell up and die: ``...the skinny, ragged wagoner was seen day after day picking up the ghetto dead....On July 1, 1942, he stopped at our door.'' The siblings try to obtain a grave, only to be told by the cemetery keeper, ``Today no one buries the dead.'' But they persevere and, 50 years later, Eichengreen has an approximate grave site at which to mourn. The memoir's past-future patterning continues as a woman in Lodz asks Eichengreen to one day look up her son in New York; eventually, Eichengreen not only manages to chance upon the man but to marry him. Another accidental postwar meeting involves the author's cruel female kapo at Auschwitz: Like other Germans and Poles the author confronts, the former kapo protests, ``I didn't do anything wrong.'' And in yet another mirroring, though Eichengreen can't bring herself to shoot a Nazi oppressor when a British officer gives her the opportunity, she later has the satisfaction of using courtroom testimony to put away a score of war criminals. Meanwhile, postwar letters from an older, married ghetto lover, as well as from the son of a Nazi whom Eichengreen indicted, keep the narration returning to Eichengreen's remarkable past. A skillful, dramatic, unsentimental blend of introspection and action.
Pub Date: Jan. 3, 1994
ISBN: 1-56279-052-8
Page Count: 248
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1993
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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