A beguiling tale of a child bewitched by the best magic: stories told by an adult not too old for make-believe.
An affectionate appreciation of a friendship that enriched a life and stirred an imagination.
Canadian actress Coyne subtly reminds us that individuals can change lives in ways that resonate forever. She begins by describing a photograph taken in June 1963 at a Toronto train station. Five-year old Susan, her mother, and older sister Nancy were about to board the transcontinental train bound for Lake Superior. The family owned a summer home on an island in a nearby lake, and Coyne vividly describes their excitement at sighting the island, opening up the house, and revisiting their favorite haunts, as well as their neighbors, the elderly Mr. and Mrs. Moir. That particular summer, Susan discovered an abandoned fireplace in the hedge between the two houses. When her father told her it was built by elves, she began leaving small presents there that disappeared by morning. One day she found a letter (her nanny read it to her) written by “Princess Nootsie Tah” on behalf of Queen Mab. Coyne dictated a reply, and the correspondence began. Reproduced here, the letters are a charming mix of fairy lore, quotes, and pithy comments from the Princess—an alter ego, we slowly realize, for Mr. Moir, a retired school inspector. Susan spent hours with him, helping in his garden or listening to him read about fairies. Young enough to believe, she was captivated by the letters and the stories. By the following summer, the fairy letters had stopped, but Susan continued her friendship and correspondence with Mr. Moir until his death years later. His letters are rich in literary allusions, information, and encouragement, which Coyne especially appreciates when she realizes in high school that she would rather act than write. Fittingly, her first role after graduation was in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
A beguiling tale of a child bewitched by the best magic: stories told by an adult not too old for make-believe.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-31706-9
Page Count: 176
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003
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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