A thoughtful slice of Americana.
The author’s adolescent diary forms the basis for an unusual memoir.
Spanning the years 1972 to 1977, Sartor’s near-daily entries tread a fine line between embarrassing self-consciousness and endearing candor as they delineate her intimate thoughts. The subjects she tackles are as varied as the cast of characters who inhabit her lively, often unpredictable, adventures. The backdrop is Montgomery, La., a small town in which her father worked as a well-respected physician and her mother raised five children. Sartor’s love life consumes a large number of entries. In the beginning, her 13-year-old affections were confined to her beloved horse Rex, but these feelings were eventually transferred to her high-school boyfriends Jackson and Mitch. From the start, though, it is obvious that Margaret’s one true love was Tommy, her trustworthy best friend and next-door neighbor. The emotional triangle that developed among her, Tommy and Jackson is depicted in the dramatic style only a teenaged girl involved in her first passionate encounters could muster. Aside from her romances, Sartor touches on Nixon’s resignation, civil rights, school admissions, elder care and family conflict. Over the course of five years, young Margaret evolved from an innocent girl who took her blessings for granted into a college-bound young woman wise enough to recognize she didn’t know all the answers. Surprises abound in this simple work. Unafraid to display her negative feelings toward others, the author also attended prayer meetings and regularly wrote about God’s importance in her life. Later, guilt consumed her as she agonized over her flakiness. Sartor was no saint. She drank, dated several boys at once and wrote constantly about her hatred for her nemesis and rival, Bonnie Dell. She knew that her behavior was far from virtuous, and her diary’s truthfulness reveals a yearning heart. In the text, Sartor’s personality changes as the years pass, and this maturation process lends her youthful voice its credibility.
A thoughtful slice of Americana.Pub Date: July 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-59691-200-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 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
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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