by Rita Mae Brown ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 6, 1997
A novelist's autobiography shows that truth is not always as much fun as fiction. Rita Mae Brown—one of the first openly gay celebrities in America, as well as one of the founders of the Second Wave women's movement—has had a life worth writing. She has produced numerous popular novels and screenplays, and had lovers as famous and difficult as herself—Martina Navratilova, Fannie Flagg, and Judy Nelson. Given away at birth by her teenage mother, she was raised by relatives; her adoptive mother was the ``Juts'' made famous in Brown's novels. Juts comes alive in this memoir, too, as does her impossible sister, Aunt Mimi. The book offers a touching evocation of a southern tomboy's childhood, as well as unsparing descriptions of early feminism and of the peculiar burdens of gay celebrity. Rita Will has witty and absorbing moments, but much of it is morally and politically preachy: She's against secrecy, homophobia, big government, sexism, and racism. Readers won't be especially surprised by these positions, and most would probably rather hear about her life. The narrative is interrupted constantly by her gushing gratitude to people who have helped her out in times of need. And as we might expect from a writer who has coauthored numerous titles with her cat, Brown packs her memoir with sentimentality about the animals in her life. This volume would be better if it were much shorter; it's dangerous when egoists write memoirs. They assume that every experience is interesting, simply because it's theirs. Worth reading, especially for Brown's numerous fans. But for the better-than-truth version, and to spend time with someone more likable than the real Brown, go back to Rubyfruit Jungle, the only-slightly-autobiographical novel that made her famous. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 6, 1997
ISBN: 0-553-09973-6
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1997
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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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SEEN & HEARD
by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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Pulitzer Prize Finalist
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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