A unique vision, presented in rough-hewn prose.
Novelist Wolfe (The Parrot Trainer, 2003, etc.) recalls a childhood growing up poor in Colorado and Montana during the 1940s and ’50s, a time when he was deeply unhappy but fully occupied.
The first thing he remembers is living rather high on the hog in Colorado. His father was chief physician at Woodman, a tuberculosis sanatorium; his mother was its chief administrator. Their relationship was unfulfilling, so there was always tension in the Wolfe household. The strain prompted their son to search the Woodman grounds for secrets behind the veil of everyday life, sometimes making a real discovery (the stairwell hidden by ferns that led to an underground tunnel) and sometimes an imaginary one (the “secret room” that he dreamed he found behind his bedroom wall). Penicillin put an end to the sanatorium, and the family took a financial plunge. Wolfe, his mentally challenged sister and his mother moved into a tent in the country. His father, now a morphine addict and child-beater, lived in town. With easy poise and an artisan’s exactitude, Wolfe explains that he found grace and acceptance in the outdoors, escaping “the usual fighting and fucking scenario that played out in the farmhouse” back home with Mom and his new stepdad. Outside, he found further opportunities to see behind the veil, into the mystery of his own universe: on skis, plunging through a blinding dazzle of powder or voyaging atop his horse. To get away from her abusive second husband, Mom took them to Montana, even though “Missoula in the 1950s was not a great place for adult misfits.” Later, Wolfe took work as a logger and a copper-miner; about each trade he spins stories both magic and real. Whatever the subject, the author’s underlying topic is “the play of things, [the] stuff that constantly glittered and zinged around in my head.”
A unique vision, presented in rough-hewn prose.Pub Date: June 21, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-31093-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.
NBA legends Bird and Johnson, fierce rivals during their playing days, team up on a mutual career retrospective.
With megastars LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and international superstars like China’s Yao Ming pushing it to ever-greater heights of popularity today, it’s difficult to imagine the NBA in 1979, when financial problems, drug scandals and racial issues threatened to destroy the fledgling league. Fortunately, that year marked the coming of two young saviors—one a flashy, charismatic African-American and the other a cocky, blond, self-described “hick.” Arriving fresh off a showdown in the NCAA championship game in which Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans defeated Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores—still the highest-rated college basketball game ever—the duo changed the course of history not just for the league, but the sport itself. While the pair’s on-court accomplishments have been exhaustively chronicled, the narrative hook here is unprecedented insight and commentary from the stars themselves on their unique relationship, a compelling mixture of bitter rivalry and mutual admiration. This snapshot of their respective careers delves with varying degrees of depth into the lives of each man and their on- and off-court achievements, including the historic championship games between Johnson’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics, their trailblazing endorsement deals and Johnson’s stunning announcement in 1991 that he had tested positive for HIV. Ironically, this nostalgic chronicle about the two men who, along with Michael Jordan, turned more fans onto NBA basketball than any other players, will likely appeal primarily to a narrow cross-section of readers: Bird/Magic fans and hardcore hoop-heads.
Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-547-22547-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
The acclaimed author of My Own Country (1996) turns his gaze inward to a pair of crises that hit even closer to home than the AIDS epidemic of which he wrote previously. Verghese took a teaching position at Texas Tech’s medical school, and it’s his arrival in the unfamiliar city of El Paso that triggers the events of his second book (parts of which appeared in the New Yorker). His marriage, already on the rocks in My Own Country, has collapsed utterly and the couple agree to a separation. In a new job in a new city, he finds himself more alone than he has ever been. But he becomes acquainted with a charming fourth-year student on his rotation, David, a former professional tennis player from Australia. Verghese, an ardent amateur himself, begins to play regularly with David and the two become close friends, indeed deeply dependent on each other. Gradually, the younger man begins to confide in his teacher and friend. David has a secret, known to most of the other students and staff at the teaching hospital but not to the recently arrived Verghese; he is a recovering drug addict whose presence at Tech is only possible if he maintains a rigorous schedule of AA meetings and urine tests. When David relapses and his life begins to spiral out of control, Verghese finds himself drawn into the young man’s troubles. As in his previous book, Verghese distinguishes himself by virtue not only of tremendous writing skill—he has a talented diagnostician’s observant eye and a gift for description—but also by his great humanity and humility. Verghese manages to recount the story of the failure of his marriage without recriminations and with a remarkable evenhandedness. Likewise, he tells David’s story honestly and movingly. Although it runs down a little in the last 50 pages or so, this is a compulsively readable and painful book, a work of compassion and intelligence.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-017405-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1998
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