for a fool. (40 b&w photos, not seen)
A discursive, anecdotal life of the prolific creator of Sherlock Holmes by the equally prolific Booth (The Industry of Souls,
1999, etc.), who seeks here to put the bluff Sir Arthur on the same pedestal as the giants of English literature. Because the largest collection of Doyle’s papers has been kept from scholarly review by his heirs, every biographer who has knelt at the physician-turned-writer’s shrine has had to speculate on crucial details about Doyle’s relationship with his dissolute father, Charles, a failed illustrator who died in an asylum, and with the mysterious lodger Bryan Waller, who saved the struggling family from an Edinburgh poorhouse and might have fathered one of Doyle's sisters. Questions also persist about the sources of Doyle's inconsistent attitudes about science, spiritualism, racism, and women’s suffrage. Moreover, Doyle’s rags-to-riches adventures as a world traveler, photographer, physician, wartime correspondent, amateur detective, patriotic booster, and, finally, writer of some of world’s best and worst genre fiction are so varied that every biographer buckles under the wealth of detail. Booth too often raises important clues to Doyle’s character only to abandon them in his rush to squeeze everything in. Still, he manages to set some records straight (Doyle had literary aspirations long before he became a physician; Sherlock Holmes was based on more originals than Joseph Bell, Doyle’s favorite medical school teacher), reprint some legends (though he spent months on research, at his peak Doyle could finish a novel in less than a week), celebrate his hero’s triumphs (Doyle was knighted for his pro-British pamphleteering during the Boer War, not for his writing), mourn his embarrassments (an ardent believer in the supernatural, he was easily duped by cynical magicians and fraudulent mediums), and explain his enduring popularity. Doyle emerges as an honorable pillar of Victorian pride and prejudice, even when he wrote ineptly and let others play him
for a fool. (40 b&w photos, not seen)Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-24251-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dunne/Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2000
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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