An emotionally complex and intensely personal binary memoir of addiction and sustainable love.
The unconventional love story between an emerging author and the troubled man she discovers to be a hard-core drug addict.
Journalist Stellin (How to Travel Practically Anywhere, 2006) and photographer MacIndoe co-narrate their journey from their first flirtatious interaction to his release years later from a short prison term on drug charges and the restarting of their life together. Stellin first met the Scottish MacIndoe in 2002 at a Montauk summer share house; they reunited in 2005 when she was in need of an author photo for a commissioned travel guidebook. Their attraction swiftly became an “obsessive, indulgent connection, which excluded the rest of the world,” as poetic emails were romantically exchanged and a spontaneous trip to Hawaii brought them even closer. During that trip, MacIndoe, an unsuccessfully detoxed addict, had been rationing sips of methadone and cloaking light drug use from Stellin. As his casual fixes regenerated into the full-blown “dark hole” of heroin and crack he’d battled prior to meeting Stellin, MacIndoe’s physical appearance and erratic, quick-tempered behavior revealed voracious dependency that both sabotaged his relationship and landed him at Rikers Island. Stellin’s painful indecision about the fate of their relationship and MacIndoe’s desperate drug-chasing, regret, and resolution to enter rehab are revealed in thoughtful, carefully crafted chapters brimming with personal details and sentiments. Written with great dexterity and fairness, both authors narrate from their individualized perspectives, vacillating over the blooming of their passion and the painful heartbreak and incremental deterioration of their romance. While long-winded in sections, both sides are elegantly and tactfully interpreted. Stellin’s sections are the most compelling, as she wrestles with loving a junkie, respecting herself, and navigating the red tape and legal confusion of MacIndoe’s prison sentence. Emotionally resonant and evenly structured, their tandem chronicle resists overly romanticizing their bittersweet interactions to focus on the dedication and devotion necessary to make their already-complicated relationship survive the fallout of critical hardships.
An emotionally complex and intensely personal binary memoir of addiction and sustainable love.Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-88274-0
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
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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