Canadian poet Ondaatje (The Collected Works of Billy the Kid) made two return journeys to his birthplace, Ceylon, in 1978 and 1980—and the result is this slight, graceful mosaic: a collection of poetic impressions and less poetic (but far more involving) Ondaatje-family stories. "How I have used them. . . . They knit the story together, each memory a wild thread in the sarong." Thus, Ondaatje pieces together his parents' histories from elderly relatives still living in Ceylon—Aunt Dolly, for instance, whose "80-year-old brain leaps like a spark plug bringing this year that year to life." And the world of these memories is primarily that of 1920s/1930s Ceylon high-society—not the European colonials, but the resident elite: "Everyone was vaguely related and had Sinhalese, Tamil, Dutch, British and Burgher blood in them going back many generations"; the preoccupations were gambling, drink, romance. So most of the friends and family hardly noticed at first that Ondaatje's suave soldier-father was an alcoholic—until he began ripping off his clothes on the railway or (in desperation) draining the liquid from kerosene lamps into his mouth. And grandmother Lalla, too, was an ancestor worth reconstructing: an earthy, merry widow ("loved most by people who saw her arriving from the distance like a storm"), the first woman in Ceylon to have a mastectomy, the triumphant victim of a 1947 flood—"her last perfect journey," evoked in imaginative detail here. Ondaatje captures less personally particular aspects of Ceylon as well: the heat, the snakes, the beautiful alphabet, the exotic wildlife. But, while there's no strong dramatic shape to his rediscovery of his parents' past (Ondaatje himself remains a blur), it's the family history that almost always holds this delicate assemblage together-and extends its appeal to a readership beyond Ondaatje's poetry-oriented following.
Pub Date: Oct. 18, 1982
ISBN: 0679746692
Page Count: 212
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1982
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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