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ANTONIA WHITE

VOL. I, DIARIES 1926-1957

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

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INTO THE WILD

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990). 

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-679-42850-X

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Villard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...

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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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