A forceful, if somewhat irritable, critique of the American medical system.
In a medical memoir and exposé, a successful spinal surgeon describes his career and the legal and professional challenges that almost derailed it.
From the start of this remembrance, orthopedic surgeon Cyr speaks about “the cutthroatbusinessmen who surround our profession” in extreme terms, calling them “predators who are waiting to devour us.” Asserting his intention to “expose conditions in our healthcare system that need an overhaul,” the author begins with his own background. A devout Christian who was born into a military family, Cyr was inclined to view his role as a doctor in terms of service rather than profit. He was inspired to take up orthopedic surgery after he had a successful knee operation following a football injury. He obtained a U.S. Air Force scholarship to pay for his expensive education, though it required him to remain in the service for 14 years and included two grueling Iraq combat deployments. He rose to the role of chief spinal surgeon and professor at the flagship U.S. Air Force hospital in Texas, where he routinely faced criticism and competition from colleagues. The legal issues that would plague his career began with the opening of his private practice, when he had to defend his right to use the name he’d chosen, which was similar to another practice’s. Many other legal issues, the author contends, resulted from counterproductive governmental regulations and insurance practices that favor corporate profits over patient welfare. Cyr is an often captivating storyteller, recounting his experiences with passion and immediacy, from intimate details of his family dynamics to the breakneck pace of his ambitious career. The role of the author’s religious faith in his dedication to medicine is also noteworthy, as when he writes that “God has surrounded me with angels and put a hand of protection over me and my family despite the constant stream of attacks I have experienced.” The tone veers toward querulousness at times, however, as in complaints about “malignant” fellow spine surgeons who disliked him, he says, because of his corporate recruiter wife’s high salary.
A forceful, if somewhat irritable, critique of the American medical system.Pub Date: May 24, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-63755-304-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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