An engrossing set of case studies, told with clear-eyed detail and deep sympathy.
Lubin looks back on violent patients, obstreperous colleagues, weird cases, miraculous cures, and inescapable deaths in this searching medical memoir.
The author recollects his 50-year career as a general practitioner and medical professor in Montreal, Vancouver, and rural British Columbia in 123 anecdotes, each running a page or two long. The narrative has plenty of action, including a fight with a hallucinating man experiencing alcohol withdrawal who had to be held down by three Mounties while Lubin sedated him, and a fatal train derailment—he was haunted afterward by his decision not to enter a burning locomotive to check on two workers who were likely already dead. The author describes toxic hospital office politics and power plays; in one confrontation, Lubin, then a medical student, was almost failed for his temerity in recommending a diagnostic test that a senior physician thought unwise (the author was later proved right). Some of the sparkling success stories include a patient who was suicidal over the pain of his rheumatoid arthritis, saved by new treatment that had him out dancing a few months later. And the stories feature some entertaining, oddball happenstances, like the couple who came into the emergency room naked and covered in soot; having sex while stoned out of their minds, they didn’t notice that their apartment was on fire until the firefighters pried them apart. Throughout, Lubin defends the art of medicine—giving special attention to the unsung general practitioner—as a humanistic calling that requires a close bond between doctor and patient. The lucid, straightforward prose renders medical issues in plain English and conveys profound emotion with plangent understatement: “At the end, the kidneys removed, her abdomen was sewn up roughly,” he writes of a young woman who died suddenly of an allergic reaction. “Then, instead of waking her up, I turned off the ventilator, noting the time. Off the ventilator, all respiration ceased. Her heart rate quickened, then slowed, then stopped. Time of death 3:30 p.m.” The result is an illuminating account of sickness and healing.
An engrossing set of case studies, told with clear-eyed detail and deep sympathy.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 9781039171374
Page Count: 297
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
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