The promise of a dreamlike fantasy lapses slowly but surely into a soporific narrative.
An Air Force enlistee's curiosity about the occult leads him across Europe on a journey of New Age self-discovery.
Davis is both author and hero of this semi-autobiographical sequel to his first novel, Buchi (2006). “Spook,” as Spirit’s Air Force pals playfully call him, has known since he was a child that he was “different”–and not just because of his parents’ unorthodox choice of name. On a visit to Great Yarmouth on England’s eastern shore in 1961, the youthful Spirit finds himself being drawn to the small storefront of “Madam Logos, Fortune Teller–Astrologer–Psychic.” Inside, he meets octogenarian Athena Logos, who informs Spirit that he is indeed “different”: Spirit is an empath, able to psychically probe the innermost feelings of others. Athena and Spirit begin weekly excursions into worlds of astrology and metaphysics to prepare him for some special “purpose” to which he is destined. Before long, a series of visions and “vibes” begins to make Spirit suspect there’s more to this typecast old fortuneteller than meets the eye. Why does Athena refuse to meet his friends? Who is the strange young woman who keeps appearing to him in visions and dreams? When Athena’s sudden disappearance leaves him without a friend and guide, he sets out to the ancient ruins of the Temple of Poseidon in Greece in search of answers. Coming to his aid are a cast of friends, both skeptical and credulous, who nevertheless offer their full emotional support to him in his journey. Author Davis invests a great deal of warmth and bonhomie in Spirit’s friendships, but therein lies a critical misstep: Spirit’s encounters with other characters are so genial and good-natured that no real conflict–interpersonal or otherwise–mars Spirit’s breezy progression to finding the answers to his questions. Stories of self-discovery thrive on struggle, but here the protagonist need only “go with the flow” to arrive at journey’s end.
The promise of a dreamlike fantasy lapses slowly but surely into a soporific narrative.Pub Date: April 24, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4257-2953-0
Page Count: 204
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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