A sensitive, mostly enjoyable memoir of making a life on Tahiti.
A lushly described account of daily life in Tahiti from an outsider’s perspective.
Turnbull (Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris, 2003) and her husband, who brought them to Tahiti from Paris for a work assignment, socialized, worked, traveled and ultimately made a home for themselves in a place many consider to be solely a vacation destination. As an Australian with a French husband, and given Tahiti’s complicated history with France, the author is admirably sensitive to cultural differences. Her portrayal of the islands and their people isn’t romanticized or naïve; she is cleareyed about the negative aspects of her life there. Her neighbors and friends are people, not exotic props, and she develops genuine connections to them. Another thread of the narrative is the author’s infertility and ultimately successful attempt to conceive through in vitro fertilization. As important as the medical journey is her emotional one: Though she had undergone the process in France and had given up on pregnancy, a remark from her therapist motivated her to try again. Her description of a harrowing accident that befell her son is all the more poignant since we know that he was the result of a “precious pregnancy.” All of her experiences—her daily swim in the lagoon, a walk through the local (and only) town or the exhilaration of snorkeling—are richly rendered in expressive language. The book is frank and personal, and at times, it feels like reading the author’s diary. This is also a drawback, however; though it is well-written and edited, there is little sense of pacing or balance.
A sensitive, mostly enjoyable memoir of making a life on Tahiti.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-59240-868-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Gotham Books
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
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
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
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