A stale exploration of a nearly forgotten writer, offering little to enhance Grahame’s relevancy for modern readers.
A biography of the author of The Wind in the Willows.
First published in 1908, The Wind in the Willows has endured as a beloved children’s classic and has also gained a devoted adult readership. The story, which celebrates the pastoral delights found in the rural English countryside as experienced through the friendship of four anthropomorphized animals, originated as a series of bedtime stories told by Kenneth Grahame (1859-1932) to his son. Grahame’s vivid descriptions of the natural setting harkened back to memories of his own childhood wanderings. Though much of Grahame’s writing for children is joyful, his personal life, as described in this latest biography by Dennison (Over the Hills and Far Away: The Life of Beatrix Potter, 2017, etc.), was often bleak. Grahame’s mother died when he was young, and after living briefly with his unstable, alcoholic father, he and his siblings were sent to live with their grandmother in a rural home known as The Mount. He would often revisit this idyllic setting in his imagination throughout much of his adult life, inspiring many of his stories. But disappointment and loss continued to haunt Grahame as an adult. He was coerced by his guardian to take on a bank job rather than attend university, leading to lonely years in London beholden to a banking career while pursuing his writing interests. A late marriage would lead to further unhappiness, as their only child committed suicide before he was 20. Sadly, Dennison does little to enliven his portrait of Grahame. While respectful and not entirely unsympathetic, the author’s treatment feels like a commissioned exercise. His prose style is overly fusty, and Grahame’s portrait lacks the psychological probing one expects with contemporary scholarship. For instance, Dennison neglects to explore his subject’s sexual identity. Though a biographer is unlikely to prove that Grahame was a homosexual, this aspect of his personality has been strongly considered by other recent scholars.
A stale exploration of a nearly forgotten writer, offering little to enhance Grahame’s relevancy for modern readers.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64313-007-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
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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