An uplifting tale of domestic martyrdom, told with a remarkable lack of self-pity, that forces us to put our own sorrows...
A paean to a housewife in a small Midwestern town who saved her ten children from homelessness by winning hundreds of jingle-writing contests during the 1950s and ’60s.
San Francisco Chronicle contributor Ryan describes her impoverished childhood in a close-knit Irish Catholic family, revealing how her mother Evelyn’s optimistic spirit counterbalanced her father’s reign of terror. A talented writer, Evelyn sacrificed her promising career when she married Kelly, an alcoholic who squandered his wages while denying his ten children the basic necessities of life. As a result, the family finances depended on Evelyn submitting witty prose to product promotions contests and winning grocery shopping sprees or expensive appliances (which were then sold) to stave off hunger. (Ryan cites some of her mother’s epigrams, which sing the praises of Pepsodent, Sealy, and Paper Mate, throughout her fast-paced narrative.) Evelyn made researching contests part of her daily routine and managed to win pretty much anything the family needed—including money for health insurance. Her grueling life, full of housework and devoid of friends, was redeemed mainly by the love of her children, who worshipped her. Although this has all the ingredients of a sob story, Ryan balances her tales of childhood trauma with humorous anecdotes about babysitting accident-prone children and wrestling irascible chickens. She also recalls how her mother finally developed a social life with other housewives who, although not as financially unfortunate as Evelyn, also managed to fill their cookie jars with the proceeds of advertising contests.
An uplifting tale of domestic martyrdom, told with a remarkable lack of self-pity, that forces us to put our own sorrows into perspective.Pub Date: April 4, 2001
ISBN: 0-7432-1122-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2001
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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