Mallory may have been an important orthopedic surgeon, but he’s no Jerome Groopman.
Tedious memoir of a retired physician.
Mallory’s recollections plod along through adolescence in 1950s Ohio, medical residency at Ohio State, cutting-edge work in hip replacement and his deepening Christian faith. About the early days of his marriage, he has nothing more interesting to impart than the fact that they were poor: “My bride and I were wrapped in blankets because the 1946 Ford I drove had no heater.” (Don’t worry; they eventually bought a big house and fancy cars.) A few details do humanize Mallory. He is frank, for example, about his desire to make money, and he freely admits he often didn’t spend enough time with his wife. But his workmanlike prose offers a textbook example for writing students of what not to do. Countless redundancies (“I was financially solvent”) and overblown adjectives (“profound,” “agonizing”) weigh down the text. Mallory manages to transform potentially revelatory moments, such as his discovery that the kindly surgeon directing his residency had end-stage cancer, into trite musings about “life’s uncertainties.” Show-don’t-tell may be overused advice, but it certainly applies here: Introducing a key story with a trite phrase like, “a tragic event occurred that affected me greatly,” is guaranteed to suck the life out of even the most powerful vignette. Extraneous reflections on (for instance) the importance of having a yard for the kids don’t serve the larger narrative—then again, it never really becomes clear what the larger narrative is. Most readers won’t make it to what is presumably intended to be the book’s emotional climax, when knee-replacement surgery and a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease show the great doctor what it’s like to be a patient.
Mallory may have been an important orthopedic surgeon, but he’s no Jerome Groopman.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-8262-1773-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Univ. of Missouri
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
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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