Emotionally compelling and intellectually rich, particularly for those with a personal connection to the issue.
Tormented for years by enervating symptoms, the author spent most of her 30s dealing with—and trying to understand—chronic illness.
“To become chronically ill is not only to have a disease that you have to manage,” writes poet and Yale Review editor O’Rourke, “but to have a new story about yourself, a story that many people refuse to hear—because it is deeply unsatisfying, full of fits and starts, anger, resentment, chasms of unruly need. My own illness story has no destination.” Here, the author constructs that story from building blocks of personal narrative and science journalism, with deep dives into the technicalities of the immune system and the microbiome. The personal sections are engaging and well written—“What I had wasn’t just an illness now; it was an identity, a membership in a peculiarly demanding sect. I had joined the First Assembly of the Diffusely Unwell. The Church of Fatigue, Itching, and Random Neuralgia. Temple Beth Ill”—as O’Rourke ably documents her myriad appointments with both Western and alternative practitioners, toting thick stacks of medical records, exploring various autoimmune diagnoses and treatment plans. Some are bizarre and/or dubious, others disgusting but legit (fecal microbiota transplant). Just when the author felt totally lost in the labyrinth of Lyme disease, prescribed the very antibiotics she believed had damaged her body in the first place, she finally found the beginning of a road to health. Though O'Rourke roundly rejects the notion that illness and suffering are somehow balanced by spiritual benefits, her conclusion offers hope. “Today, as a new paradigm for disease is emerging—pushed into full view by the coronavirus pandemic and the epidemic of long COVID—we must amend the simple ‘germ causes disease, body overcomes disease’ model….A holistic, individualized approach to medicine may matter more than was once thought.”
Emotionally compelling and intellectually rich, particularly for those with a personal connection to the issue.Pub Date: March 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-59463-379-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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