For living-theater fans only.
A plain-Jane year in the life of a single woman in London, told with deadening restraint.
In chapters the size of postage stamps, Smith (Misadventures, not reviewed) tells of her year living in an East End bed-sit. The circumstances are the stuff of everyday: three other women live in the house; the gas, electric, and hot water are coin-operated; boyfriends are not supposed to spend the night during the week, but one is in permanent residence downstairs; her floor-mate plays the TV and stereo much too loudly, and the other residents consider her a “selfish cow.” In an easy voice conspicuous in its flatness, Smith tells readers, “the toilet was an absolute disgrace,” and, “living next to Laura made life unpleasant and I considered what to do about it.” What she does is meekly mention the volume, and Laura tells her to shove off. There is much parrying and thrusting as they seek to drive one another mad, though Smith keeps an even—not to say bland—keel while relating events. A neighbor leaves the dog out too long and it cries, bath water is nicked, the rota of toilet paper renewal is often forgotten. The author goes out dancing occasionally, or to a bar, but is more often found in her room with tea and television. There is an awful lot of talk about laundry, and readers’ heart monitors may well be flat-lining at the artless placidity of it all. Smith expresses no yearning, no introspection, no ups and downs. Even her rare fits of self-assertion are without inflection: “Each time I ran the bath I found it was rinsed but not cleaned. . . . I cleaned the bath before I got in it and only gave it a quick rinse after I'd used it. That way we both faced a dirty bath.” Such is the drama of life with Laura.
For living-theater fans only.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2003
ISBN: 1-4000-3267-9
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 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
PERSPECTIVES
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
