A searching, sensual celebration of one woman’s struggle for identity and autonomy.
A poet and essayist’s candid account of how she came to painful terms with her sexuality and her Mormon faith.
Growing up in the Mormon Church, Hardy (This Blonde, 2009, etc.) learned early on that the only “right way to live” was by following Mormon doctrine. She also learned that, as a woman, a home, babies and a “hot dad” of a husband were the three most important things she could aspire to have. Unlike the Mormon girls she knew, though, Hardy wanted time to live life on her own terms before committing to the eternal partnership promised by an LDS marriage. But she faced two problems. With every year that passed, the pool of available Mormon men grew smaller, and any males she dated outside the church were more likely to expect sex from her. Tormented by efforts to keep “[her] body separate from [her] spirit,” Hardy sought release from desire in the sexy rhythms of salsa and flirtations that sometimes led to more than she bargained for. Meanwhile, she fumbled her way through a series of unconsummated relationships throughout her 20s and 30s. Despite the endless sexual frustrations and the despair into which she eventually sank, the author still found the beginnings of the personal fulfillment for which she longed in teaching, travel and writing poetry. It wasn’t until she was over 35 that Hardy finally renounced celibacy and broke away from the church. To her credit, she still managed to maintain respect for the imperfect and often contradictory system that, though unable to completely accept or understand her need for independence, still “taught [her] so much about integrity and love.”
A searching, sensual celebration of one woman’s struggle for identity and autonomy.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4013-4186-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2013
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 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
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