Bound to please fans.
A lively, somewhat disjointed memoir by the former drummer and founder of The Police.
The American-born son of a CIA agent and his archaeologist wife, Copeland grew up a “diplo-brat” in Beirut, where he played drums in the American Embassy Beach Club ballroom at age 12. His idol was drummer Buddy Rich. In 1977, he formed The Police with singer-bassist Sting and guitarist Henry Padovani, who was later replaced by Andy Summers. The group broke up in 1984, reuniting in 2007 for a world tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of their hit song “Roxanne.” In these sometimes rambling scenes from his life, Copeland describes his self-imposed exile as a rock star in the 1980s, when young fans would congregate outside his London home singing Police songs. While longing for a normal life in his post-rock years, he finds himself “in the constant company of a distantly remembered mythical being” and still having strange adventures. The adventures include playing polo with royalty, making a movie with hundreds of Pygmies in the northern Congo and singing ancient folk songs with 40,000 frenzied celebrants at Night of the Tarantula festivities in Italy. In other snippets, the author recounts serving as a judge on a BBC TV show, scoring music for a movie directed by Anjelica Huston and hanging with the Foo Fighters at an MTV marathon. Working in recent years as a Hollywood music writer, he describes taking time out for the Police reunion tour, which included locations in Europe, Asia and Latin America and concluded at Madison Square Garden in August 2008. Unsure at first what to say to one another, the reunited rockers soon warmed up, had their customary disagreements (often Sting-centered) and made great music. With the passion of a musician enamored of his art, Copeland conveys his entire musical journey, from spraying the name of the just-formed Police on walls in London in the late ’70s to his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame several years ago.
Bound to please fans.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-06-179149-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperStudio
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
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 2026 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.
