Tonic for malcontents: goes down easily and leaves a lingering, pleasantly sweet and sour aftertaste.
Engaging memoirs of a search for life with meaning that has taken the author from young wife and mother to hippie peacenik and feminist counselor to writer and environmental activist.
Sojourner (Delicate, 2001), a contributor to NPR’s Morning Edition, begins with her Catholic childhood in upstate New York. Unsettled by a brilliant, neurotic mother and weak, frightened father, she found her security in reading stories. The following decades brought early marriage and motherhood, a succession of lovers, life in an “urban, anarchist, agrarian commune,” and deep unrest and unhappiness. With rent, food, and childcare covered by various Great Society programs, she returned to college to study sociology, had her consciousness raised by a women’s-studies class, and within a few years was teaching feminist courses and getting even with all the wrongdoing men in her life. In middle age she discovered the work of Edward Abbey, particularly The Monkey Wrench Gang and Desert Solitaire, and moved to Flagstaff, Arizona, where she now lives alone (her children are grown and on their own) in a small cabin with electricity but no running water. In graceful, brief essays, Sojourner writes about finding her life’s true work and her spiritual home, about slowing down the pace of a too-fast life, connecting with a place, and making friendships with other people who care for that place. Keeping her memoirs from sliding into a smugness are revelations about the author’s devotion to casinos and slot machines, her addiction to her computer’s Scrabble game and e-mail, her troubles with drinking, and her disappointments with men. A portrait emerges of a strong, mature woman, thoughtful, witty, candid, and, if not exactly serene, then content with and even proud of the life she has made for herself and the work she is doing to preserve the beauty of the land around her.
Tonic for malcontents: goes down easily and leaves a lingering, pleasantly sweet and sour aftertaste.Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-2968-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 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.
