A solid grounding to the saint’s life that provides the footing necessary to explore more speculative works like, for...
Freeman (Classics/Washington Univ.) sticks close to authenticated sources in this quick and rangy popular biography, which serves up a taste of life and times in Ireland and late-Roman Britain during the fifth century.
Since the author prefers to expostulate on the facts as they are known and to set one piece aside another without forcing the fit, there is little narrative drive to his life of Ireland’s patron saint—but then, Patrick wasn’t given to high drama. Freeman’s strength lies in his ability to bring a place to life in the mind’s eye. Britain in the weak final years of Roman rule, before the medieval Anglo-Saxon community took hold, was an unstable terrain subject to raids by the Picts, Saxon, and Irish. A group of the latter spirited Patrick away from his family and into slavery on (most likely) the west coast of Ireland. The author is patient with the material; when he notes that Patrick’s family were nobles and farmers, he discusses the nature of Roman governance and the look and feel of a typical British villa/farmstead, all of which adds terrific color to the story. Infectiously smitten with the age, if perhaps less so with the saint, Freeman delights with overviews of the political and social landscape Patrick entered upon his return to Ireland, as well as the spiritual environment that was already in place. He delivers a sharp, elementary course in traditional local religions, including Druidism, and the role of celibate women in the early Christian church. He describes Patrick’s Confessions, actually one of only two extant letters from the saint, as a “window into the soul of a person,” far more intimate than Cicero’s letters or Augustine’s Confessions and, as such, “like no other document from ancient times.”
A solid grounding to the saint’s life that provides the footing necessary to explore more speculative works like, for example, E.A. Thompson’s Who Was Saint Patrick? (1986).Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-5632-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
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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