An earnest but disorganized remembrance.
A plainspoken memoir by an American ex-soldier, meteorologist, father, and recovering addict who overcomes challenges and gains insights while on a quest to find inner peace.
In his debut, Washington works to weave his varied experiences into a statement of his personal philosophy, which is made clear in the first line: “I believe the foundation of peace is having a positive outlook on life.” The rest of this short but comprehensive work explores Washington’s efforts to practice this positivity throughout the ups and downs of his life, from childhood to the present. His military service, his career in meteorology, his Christian faith, and his times spent in New York City and St. Louis all play important parts in the story. But these all pale in comparison to the two most engaging segments: an account of Washington’s relationship with his son, and another about his struggle with crack cocaine. The former is an emotional story of the author’s growth from a boy, who becomes a father at 17, to a man, who’s been made wise by tragedy. The latter is a strong, if more conventionally told, addiction memoir that brims with honesty; it also makes a narrative digression, briefly telling the author’s tale from his wife’s point of view, which comes as a welcome breath of fresh air. Readers may wish that Washington had explored these portions of his life in greater depth and cut back on many of the others. Doing so might have helped to correct the book’s most frustrating flaw: a confusing structure that proceeds according to theme—such as “childhood,” “faith,” and “the Navy”—with little regard to when individual events happened, which causes the reader’s sense of time to blur. The chapter about Washington’s son, for example, comes relatively early in the memoir, but it covers a 20-year span that the author repeatedly re-examines over the course of the rest of the book. Even within chapters, the narration leaps around in a way that it makes it difficult to place events in order. In its best moments, however, Washington offers a compelling read about his darkest struggles.
An earnest but disorganized remembrance.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5320-0675-3
Page Count: 162
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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