A ribald memoir of self-discovery that is not for the squeamish.
Journalist and comedian Stadtmiller, best known for describing her dating life in detail for the readers of the New York Post, covers the decade of her 30s in an uninhibited account of bad behavior.
In 2005, the author, now a columnist for the Daily Beast, turned 30, got divorced after a marriage of five years, and started a new job at the Post. She wrote features and covered celebrities, and then she found her niche writing a dating column. When she wasn't writing, she was drinking to the point of frequent blackouts, going through “binge-and-starve cycles,” and having a series of one-night stands with people she often didn’t recognize in the morning. As she writes, her life had become “a cocktail of excess.” With her therapists, Stadtmiller delved into her past and found some plausible explanations for her behavior: Her parents, she writes, both had psychological problems, she was sexually assaulted at a party when she was a teenager, and, later, her parents failed to show sufficient interest in her career. Throughout, the author name-drops with enthusiasm. At one point, for example, she claims that she was simultaneously dating Aaron Sorkin, Keith Olbermann, and Lloyd Grove. Eventually, the memoir takes the shape of a redemption narrative. Stadtmiller hit bottom several times, joined AA and other recovery programs, realized she couldn’t count on a guy to make her life worth living, met “one of the kindest, most thoughtful guys I've dated,” and got married again. Presumably, she is currently living happily-ever-after. More intriguing than the contours of this familiar story are the darkly humorous details of working for the Post and the other publications where she has worked or freelanced, including xoJane, TimeOut, Maxim, and Penthouse.
A ribald memoir of self-discovery that is not for the squeamish.Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7403-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2018
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
