A middling memoir of self-discovery.
On a skiing trip around the world, the author loses herself in order to find herself and unexpectedly finds love in the process.
Except for the skis and the mountains, the narrative arc of this memoir sounds very much like that of other books that have become popular accounts of transformative pilgrimages—see: Elizabeth Gilbert and Cheryl Strayed. The main difference is that there was no real crisis that impelled Jagger on her quest. “We wait until we’re broken…before we examine ourselves, before we look in the mirror,” writes the author. “No one ups and changes a close to perfect life.” So why did she quit her solid sales-and-marketing job, go into debt, and commit to skiing some 4 million vertical feet over the course of one year? “A small amount of boredom had crept into my life of late,” she writes. “I was content, happy with everything I had and everything I’d done, but it still wasn’t enough.” Though the scenery is spectacular—Japan, New Zealand, France—both the writer and readers discover that descriptions of skiing can also be boring, or at least repetitive, punctuated by the occasional tumble that leaves her on all fours and questioning why she was doing such a thing. Eventually, Jagger learned that sometimes a ski trip isn’t just a ski trip but, “in many ways, my very own rite of passage, one about knowing and owning every sacred ounce of myself.” Along the way, the author met many fellow seekers and even fell in love, but only after she’d also become involved with someone else. “I’m not gonna lie, things were really on fire for me in the titillation department,” she writes. Yet after committing to the man who had initially seemed remote and indifferent to her, she discovered a relationship that went even deeper than love, a relationship that proceeded through “our first official vagina worshipping” by her “own vagina whisperer.”
A middling memoir of self-discovery.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-241810-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper Wave
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
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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