Sharp, witty, occasional black humor from a woman who has gone through hell and back and lived to tell the tale.
The chronicles of a comedian's life.
Stand-up comedian Grodin delves deeply into the fabric of her life to bring readers an honest examination of her roller-coaster existence. Experimenting with sex and drugs in high school turned into years of casual relationships and life lived for the high from alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and heroin (“Alcohol and other drugs had helped me feel like I didn’t have any worries in the world. But heroin made me feel like I didn’t have any world”). Grodin scrutinizes her codependent relationship with her mother and how she longed to be away from her. However, in times of great stress, the author wanted nothing more than to be wrapped in her mother's arms. When her mother was diagnosed with brain cancer, she writes, "I had always been like my mother's little husband, and now I moved into this role completely—the role I felt I'd been in training for my whole life—I became her caretaker….Though the circumstances were as dire as it gets, she was thrilled that we were together.” Throughout all her ups and downs, the author’s father, actor and talk show host Charles Grodin, was always there, with encouraging words, money, love and support, no questions asked. Multiple times, Grodin bottomed out, only to scrape herself together, facing her addictions, her weight issues and her fears. Eventually, Grodin entered a stable relationship, finally said yes to a second marriage proposal and began trying for a child, with heartbreaking results. Further insult was added when Grodin was diagnosed with cancer in the very thing she had always wished as a teen to rid herself of: her breast. Despite the harshness of her oftentimes self-induced problems, the author interjects her offbeat humor throughout the text, providing much-needed relief from the recitation of her pendulum of emotions.
Sharp, witty, occasional black humor from a woman who has gone through hell and back and lived to tell the tale.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4555-1013-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Center Street/Hachette
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2013
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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