A remembrance with lively individual scenes that fail to merge into a cohesive whole.
A debut memoir about a woman’s three-decade search for connection and self-assurance.
Born in 1962, Chadwick grew up in suburban Chicago with her parents, brother, and half sister. She went to Catholic school and describes her house as “idyllic,” fondly recalling a birch tree in the yard; she often found solace in its shade. Her mother’s perfectionism made her anxious, though, as did her father's frequent absences for business. When her brother removed a family of rabbits from under her tree, Chadwick writes, she began to sense a growing instability in her world. When she was in middle school, her parents divorced, and she moved to a town house with her mother. She found the new location very disruptive, she says, because “my physical, material world defined my foundation.” She entered journalism school keen to learn advertising but socially insecure; she wanted a boyfriend but was unable to connect to the young men she met. During this time, she renewed her faith in God, the only relationship “that never caused anxiety, frustration, or loneliness.” Upon graduation, Chadwick found work in advertising with a number of firms from which she was either fired or laid off, further damaging her self-confidence. Eventually, she landed a job with a bank and moved to San Francisco, where she met her future husband. Together, they returned to Chicago and found their home. Chadwick brings numerous anecdotes to life with vivid dialogue and details of settings and characters. She recalls exactly what she wore on a date in the 1980s, for example, as well as the flow of each conversation she had over the years. In her acknowledgments, Chadwick says she revised her autobiography until she had a memoir that was “complete with experiences of reflections and takeaways.” Unfortunately, although the book touches on promising themes—including the effects of divorce and the need for home—she doesn’t explore them in great detail. Instead, readers are left with a long series of events, unsure where to invest their energy or empathy.
A remembrance with lively individual scenes that fail to merge into a cohesive whole.Pub Date: June 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63152-357-1
Page Count: 248
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2018
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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