A somewhat repetitive but endearing story of an adoptee’s struggle to forgive old wounds and redefine his senses of self and...
In his debut memoir, Mulkey tells how he forged a relationship with his biological father and brother, discovered a vast network of extended family, and underwent all the upheaval and soul-searching along the way.
Mulkey grew up knowing he was adopted and that his mother was a young, unwed Canadian woman who traveled to Oregon to give birth and sign over her rights to her newborn son to his adoptive family. It was only as a college undergraduate that he discovered the whereabouts of his biological father and brother. Though his biological mother had died, Mulkey decided to make contact with what was left of his family, and in so doing, he was plunged into the midst of not only an identity crisis, but a complicated family feud that played out over three countries and two continents. He endured the abusive, negligent behavior of his birth father, Giulio, along with a competitive rivalry with his brother, Paul. Increasingly, the author found himself negotiating a minefield of accusation and ill feeling among Giulio, his adoptive family, his biological mother’s family, and his boisterous and loving extended family in Italy. Mulkey grappled with depression and financial setbacks as he worked to determine his loyalties and his ever unfolding sense of identity. Mulkey’s voice is engaging from the start, and his ability to communicate humor and absurdity amid heartbreak is admirable, as when he tells of being terrified by his cousin Sergio’s impromptu re-enactment of a scene from The Shining after Mulkey took him to a shooting location for the film earlier in the day. While detailed depictions and character sketches engage, the more ruminative analysis can be repetitive. For instance, at the end of the book, Mulkey realizes that he was “fiercely envious” of his brother’s success, as if it were a sudden revelation rather than an oft-repeated defining characteristic of their relationship.
A somewhat repetitive but endearing story of an adoptee’s struggle to forgive old wounds and redefine his senses of self and family.Pub Date: June 8, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482608076
Page Count: 280
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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