This work chronicles an instructively detailed, albeit odd, journey through family court.
In Book 2 of this autobiographical series, a man attempts to reconcile with his adoptive daughter.
In Book 1, which related a bizarre and entrenched skirmish with the juvenile court system, Cambridge (Denied! Failing Cordelia: Book One, 2014) explained his complex relationship with an adopted daughter he referred to as Cordelia. In this second installment, the author explores a number of legal battles in which his “overriding objective” was reunification with the teenage Cordelia. It is a war, the reader learns early on, that has already been lost. By the time of the volume’s publication, Cordelia was legally an adult, and the author could not see her due to a restraining order. Nevertheless, Cambridge has a great deal to say about what happened and waxes on subjects ranging from restraining orders to an imaginary speech he would like to hear read in court. Throughout these pages, the author sees himself largely as a victim of Shakespearean proportions, whether at the hands of a disinterested attorney or from flaws attributable to his own Asperger’s syndrome. Then there is Cambridge’s penchant for extended metaphors (for example, he discusses a legal procedure that “could make the Titanic seem agile in trying to avoid the iceberg that sank it”). Such attempts at engendering sympathy do not always succeed, particularly since Cordelia, regardless of her own mental health and emotional challenges, for the most part seems to not want a reconciliation. And while the author may not be the most relatable figure to pass through the legal process, his perspective is an undeniably singular one. As he asserts: “Having direct experience of both adopting a legally free child and then of fighting for her in a dependency case, I feel uniquely qualified to be able to speak directly to the joys of the former and the cruelty of the latter.” The book digs deeply into child-parent legalities, and, though the conclusion is foregone, Cambridge’s many struggles are informative. Diverse challenges, like the “two-stage process” of a Section 388 petition, are explained by someone who has lived through them. The book manages to incorporate practical issues (such as hiring an attorney versus using a public defender) into an inherently sad and strange overarching story.
This work chronicles an instructively detailed, albeit odd, journey through family court.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5144-8891-1
Page Count: 698
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
PERSPECTIVES
© 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.
