Electric transmissions from a bygone era, etched in blood by someone who was there in body and spirit.
The propulsive bass guitarist for Joy Division puts his fingers on the beating pulse of one of the U.K.’s most influential bands.
After the cinematic portrayals of the band’s tragic central figure Ian Curtis in the films 24 Hour Party People and Control, it’s easy to lose track of their central influences. In an unflinchingly honest memoir, Hook (The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club, 2009) peels away the romantic sheen colored by its dark history and gives unfettered insight into the band’s origins and inspirations, as well as its comedies and tragedies. From Hook’s first vision of the Sex Pistols, the young musician-to-be was hooked. After recruiting mates Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris, they sought out the sensitive, artistic Curtis to lead them forward. Hook captures his lead singer well: “A poetic, sensitive, tortured soul, the Ian Curtis of the myth—he was definitely that. But he could also be one of the lads—he was one of the lads, as far as we were concerned.” What the author does even better is to remember the whole outrageous scene, from the tabloid outcry over the band’s murky name to the explosive shows dominated by bands like The Clash and Throbbing Gristle. Even the expected recollection of writing “Love Will Tear Us Apart” comes with decidedly unexpected truths. From the manifold perils of life on the road to his ongoing guilt over the band’s treatment of Curtis, Hook never pulls a punch. Add in a comprehensive timeline and track-by-track notes on the band’s two sole albums, and this is required reading for anyone who ever felt moved by Joy Division’s cold, dark music.
Electric transmissions from a bygone era, etched in blood by someone who was there in body and spirit.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-222256-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: It Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
