This slim volume chronicles Reynolds Price's four years with ``the eel,'' his name for the ten-inch long tumor that was found enmeshed in his spinal chord during his 51st year. With little fanfare or self-pity, the acclaimed author (Blue Calhoun, 1992; Kate Vaiden, 1986; etc.) and long-time teacher at Duke University takes the reader through each battle, medical and personal, from the ordeal of his initial and incomplete surgery to the debilitating effects of the ensuing radiation therapy, which left him paraplegic. He lavishes praise on nurses, therapists, and loyal friends along the way, while condemning unthinking doctors for their ignorance of the human element in practicing medicine. And he thanks the worthy; the book is dedicated, in part, to his surgeon. A particularly moving segment in its honesty and courage (although Price might very well deny the latter) is his struggle through rehab, ``a marooned island of damaged men and women intent on bringing ourselves to a state of repair that would let us visit the mainland again.'' Throughout, Price mixes facts from his calendar—mostly records of his pain level and physical descent- -with poems from his daybook. These verses allow the reader to touch the emotional river coursing beneath the narrative that the author works so hard to keep objective. Ultimately, there is something comforting about this book and, yes, inspiring. The eel is removed and Price learns to negotiate his pain. He returns to writing and teaching with a greater intensity than ever before. This is the story of a man who watches his first self die, and in place of it, a new self created; a story of resurrection, of transformation; a story of hope.
Pub Date: May 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-689-12197-0
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1994
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
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