Fans of Amis’s work will enjoy Bradford’s literary detection and unadorned, jargon-free style.
Solid, well-written biography that sheds new light on the life and work of the famed British novelist.
Kingsley Amis (1922–95) protested throughout his long career that his fictions were not autobiographical, though his readers, especially his students and university colleagues, took it as given that Jim Dixon, the protagonist of Amis’s 1953 novel Lucky Jim, was the author’s doppelgänger. In fact, writes Bradford (English/Univ. of Ulster), Amis drew liberally from his own circumstances and the private lives of friends and colleagues to populate his novels, and the biographer pores over his oeuvre to sort out thickly veiled reality from happy inventions, treating that oeuvre as “one of the most entertaining and thought-provoking autobiographies ever produced.” Gently suggesting that Eric Jacobs’s authorized biography (Kingsley Amis, 1998) lent too much credence to its subject’s claims, Bradford improves on it by offering both an entertaining narrative of Amis’s life and well-reasoned commentary on his work, including his often-overlooked travel-writing and poetry. Though clearly an admirer, Bradford does not shy from recounting Amis’s less than admirable qualities, including a fondness for the bottle, for womanizing, and for “conspicuously hedonistic” behavior, to say nothing of his general approval of Margaret Thatcher and his (perhaps) jealousy-sparked feud with his writer son Martin. On the positive side, he shows that Amis, though offhand in public, was a famously hard worker who devoted years (four, in the case of Lucky Jim) to writing and rewriting each of his books, and whose work improved with age, yielding mature, graceful novels such as The Old Devils and You Can’t Do Both that easily outshine his most famous book.
Fans of Amis’s work will enjoy Bradford’s literary detection and unadorned, jargon-free style.Pub Date: Dec. 17, 2001
ISBN: 0-7206-1117-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2001
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
© Copyright 2025 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.
