A moving, spiritual account of a search for meaning through meditation.
A woman depicted in one of the Beatles’ most famous songs tells her story.
Bruns played a small but significant part in the history of the Fab Four: she, along with her sister, the actress Mia Farrow, and the Beatles, went to India in 1968 to study meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Her dedicated attention to meditation for long periods inspired John Lennon to write “Dear Prudence,” which appeared on the Beatles’ 1968 self-titled record. However, most people know little else about Bruns, a Transcendental Meditation teacher based in Florida, and this debut memoir attempts to change that. As the daughter of director John Farrow and actress Maureen O’Sullivan, she grew up in a life of privilege, including servants, private schools, and trips abroad. A common thread that runs through her memoir, though, is her search for something spiritual and meaningful, going all the way back to Catholic school. She experienced personal tragedies, including the untimely deaths of her brother and father, and lived through rebellious teenage years, which included drinking and bouts of depression. A harrowing experience with LSD (“it felt as if my body was gone and I was left in hell for all eternity”) led her to practice meditation, and she describes its transformative effects almost poetically: “Although subtle, a priority shift had quietly taken place. Time took on new meaning, suddenly becoming far more precious to me—I couldn’t waste it anymore. I felt compelled to use it much more wisely.” The final chapters center on her meeting the maharishi and her experiences with the members of the Beatles, particularly Lennon and George Harrison. She was more interested in meditation during her stay than being in the musicians’ company, although she found them to be kindred spirits: “I related to George and benefited from his perspective through transference.” What makes this book stand out is the fact that it’s not a typical, dishy celebrity tell-all, although there are some fascinating stories about her Hollywood upbringing and her time with the Beatles (such as when Lennon and Harrison entered her room performing “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”). It’s a portrait of a young woman trying to center her life amid personal pain and how she found herself. Overall, it’s a rather life-affirming tale from someone who’s more than just a footnote in pop-music history.
A moving, spiritual account of a search for meaning through meditation.Pub Date: June 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5030-2988-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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