An odd, uneven mix of history, cultural criticism, and memoir.
Assorted musings from a modern witch.
Witches are having a moment, and Grossman has played no small role in making this happen. A practicing witch herself, she is the founder of the Occult Humanities Conference at NYU, and she has been published in a variety of publications. Her personal Instagram account has 8,000 followers, and the account for her podcast, The Witch Wave, has nearly 14,000. One might expect her book to be an accessible guide to witchcraft and its most recent renaissance. It is not that, and, indeed, it’s difficult to say what this book is or for whom it was written. The chapter called “Body Monsters” includes some intriguing observations about women and motherhood. However, in trying to establish a connection between historic and modern ideas about female sexuality and reproductive rights, Grossman includes much more detail about contemporary politics than is necessary to make her point. The extended exploration of witch-inspired fashion also feels like a bad fit for this section. The author’s treatment of witches in recent pop culture is especially frustrating. It reads as if Grossman is unaware of the incredible wealth of material—from the scholarly essays to fan sites—devoted to subjects like Sabrina Spellman and Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Willow Rosenberg. An author writing for a general audience can be forgiven for not taking a deep dive into the academic literature, but Grossman doesn’t offer any insight into these characters that wouldn’t be obvious to a casual viewer. Overall, the text feels more like notes toward a full-length study than a finished product, and the long passages of autobiographical material reinforce this sense. Most readers will come away from the book with an understanding of why it is so appealing to Grossman but little else.
An odd, uneven mix of history, cultural criticism, and memoir.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-982100-70-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
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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