A well-researched and engaging portrait of writer Fanny Calderón de la Barca.
A biography of the Scottish-born wife of a Spanish diplomat, known for her writings on life in 19th-century Mexico.
This biography was edited by Fisher (In Hearing of the Ocean, 2013, etc.) and first written by his parents, Marion Hall and Howard T. Fisher. It tells the story of Frances "Fanny" Calderón de la Barca, a noted figure in mid-19th-century literary and diplomatic circles. The book traces Fanny Inglis’ childhood and youth among the Scottish gentry, where her family circulated among Edinburgh’s elite and made the most of their distant connections to the nobility. After suffering financial losses, Inglis and her mother and sisters relocated to the United States, where she met and married a Spanish ambassador. As Fanny Calderón de la Barca, she traveled to Mexico when her husband represented Spain there, writing about the experience in a series of letters she published as a book, Life in Mexico. The Calderón de la Barcas saw revolution in Mexico and further political upheaval on their return to Spain, which served as fodder for another book. After she was widowed, Calderón de la Barca oversaw the education of the Spanish infanta and lived the remainder of her life among European nobles and royals. The work draws heavily on Calderón de la Barca’s published and unpublished writings to produce a solidly researched and informative biography. It loses focus, however, when describing periods not covered by the historical record—there is little documentation of Inglis’ childhood, for instance, so the text relies on the diary of Elizabeth Grant, her contemporary, and logical inferences—and speculates to excess on its subjects’ thoughts (“We feel ourselves to be on solid ground in guessing the direction toward which Buchan’s thoughts strayed”; “We think it legitimate to assume that Fanny Inglis was looking forward to the Peers’ Ball”) in a style that occasionally reminds the reader that much of the text was composed three decades ago. Aside from these issues of presentation, however, the result is a thorough and substantial biography of a less-familiar figure of the 19th century.
A well-researched and engaging portrait of writer Fanny Calderón de la Barca.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5144-2137-6
Page Count: 402
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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