Antonia White (1899-1980), author of four autobiographical novels (Frost in May, 1933, etc.) and unlikely heroine of the feminist movement, described the period when these diaries begin as ``chaos, misery, breakdown, analysis, divorce''—although the entries conclude with one of the happiest periods of her life. Chitty (That Singular Person Called Lear, 1988, etc.), her daughter, on whose defects White often dwelt, is the unflinching editor of what seems almost an act of contrition for her mother. Certified insane at age 22, White found refuge from madness in analysis, love affairs, and religion, returning to her Catholic faith during a lesbian affair and finding comfort in it for the rest of her life. The diaries served as a confidante to which White could recite inventories of her moods, obsessions, and failures; anatomies of characters and relationships; and confessions of her sloth, jealousy, and inability to love or to inspire love in men, women, and even her children. As revealed here, Lydall, the less problematic child, entitled her memoir of her mother Nothing to Forgive; Susan, the older and illegitimate child, also suffered a nervous collapse at age 22, attempted suicide, and, after briefly finding refuge with her mother, rejected her, excluding her from her marriage and her own children, refusing to communicate for five torturous years. White's pain and isolation were intensified by the betrayal of her analyst, who married her ex-husband, and complicated by several people who plagued her—one a fan who sent money and several letters a day before turning on her, another an actress who successfully sued her for libel because of an accidental similarity to a fictional character. The diary does end on an upbeat note: ``Think about Work, my good woman, not fancy whims.'' Fascinating not for what it reveals about White's world (which she shared with Virginia Woolf and Graham Greene, who appears briefly), but for the guileless revelations of a troubled if functioning author inventing her life. (Eight pages of b&w photos- -not seen.)
Pub Date: June 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-670-83970-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1992
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
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