While the story sometimes reads like an intercultural soap opera, it is the author’s courage to face her mistakes that makes...
An American freelance journalist’s painful account of how a hasty marriage to a Chinese man turned her life upside down.
Blumberg-Kason was a “shy Midwestern wallflower” going to graduate school in Hong Kong when she met her future husband. With his intelligence, confidence and movie-star looks, Cai seemed a dream come true. He engaged her as his English tutor and, a few months later, declared his desire to date and marry her. The author assented, blind to what it would mean to become the wife of a Chinese man she barely knew. Before the pair even married, Cai’s parents told her they would take care of the baby they had not yet had—with or without her. Immediately after the wedding, the formerly “gentle” Cai was “more interested in watching porn than being with [her].” His bad behavior only worsened, as he became moody, demanding and verbally abusive. Believing that Cai’s outbursts were simply the result of a need to acclimate to married life, Blumberg-Kason resolved to "dance [her] way around future eruptions.” But their relationship grew even more riddled with problems, one of which involved a too-close-for-comfort relationship between Cai and one of his male professors. Lonely and unable to tolerate the social and interpersonal norms of mainland Chinese culture, Blumberg-Kason moved to San Francisco with her husband. But the perfect life she still dreamed of eluded her. Even the author’s longed-for baby became a source of cross-cultural conflict between her and her husband. Dissatisfied with American life, Cai demanded that their son go back to China with him. Only then did Blumberg-Kason realize that accommodating her husband would cause her to lose the one thing that had redeemed an otherwise dysfunctional marriage.
While the story sometimes reads like an intercultural soap opera, it is the author’s courage to face her mistakes that makes the book worthwhile.Pub Date: July 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4022-9334-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
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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