by Penelope Niven ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2012
Although at times overwhelmed by her own research, Niven creates a perceptive, indispensable portrait of a productive and...
A satisfying and insightful, if overlong, picture of a solitary writer who never stopped being a family man.
There are times reading this new biography by Niven (Swimming Lessons: Life Lessons from the Pool, from Diving in to Treading Water, 2004, etc.) when readers may wonder why a book about Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) is so inordinately concerned with the lives of his siblings. Biographical overkill, or is there some kind of a point? Both. For Niven, understanding Wilder’s family is simply vital to understanding Wilder, whose books and plays dig away at how people become who they are. His loving but repressive father, Amos, raised five children all over the world (while serving as President Taft’s consul to China) and micromanaged their lives every step of the way; they in turn bore the burden of his influence. At one extreme is Thornton; the son from whom Amos expected the least became a three-time Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist and playwright whose major dramas, Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, are anchored by families as hopeful and anxiety-ridden as his own. At the other is sister Charlotte, an esteemed poet whose artistic life was cut short by tormented lesbian desires and schizophrenia. Wilder’s own sex life is a mystery; like Henry James, he left only scant evidence that he ever had one. He had other things on his mind, as Niven ably sums up: “How do you live? How do you bear the unbearable? How do you handle the various dimensions of love, of faith, of the human condition? How do universal elements forge every unique, individual life? And where does the family fit in the cosmic scheme of things?” For Wilder, the old questions were the only ones worth considering.
Although at times overwhelmed by her own research, Niven creates a perceptive, indispensable portrait of a productive and restlessly intellectual life.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-083136-3
Page Count: 848
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
Share your opinion of this book
More by Penelope Niven
BOOK REVIEW
by Penelope Niven & illustrated by Mark Nadel
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
by James Earl Jones with Penelope Niven
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Elie Wiesel
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
Awards & Accolades
Likes
18
Our Verdict
GET IT
Google Rating
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2016
New York Times Bestseller
Pulitzer Prize Finalist
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
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.